The NHS prescription charge in England will increase to £9.65 on 1st April.
This note explains how this will affect your automated collection orders.
I add orders using the MedPoint Portal
The charge amount is based on the date the order is created in the MedPoint portal (when the barcode is printed). Therefore, the higher Rx charge will take effect automatically for any new orders created from Saturday 1st April onwards. You do not need to do anything to edit the charge.
I use a PMR interface to add orders (Analyst, Cegedim, Proscript, Titan PMR)
The charge amount is sent by your PMR system which normally also updates on the date the order is labelled on the PMR. Therefore, the higher Rx charge will take effect automatically for any new orders labelled from Saturday 1st April onwards. If your PMR provider does not normally auto-update the charge amount then you will need to edit this in your PMR settings.
Orders labelled before 1st April
If an order is created/labelled before 1st April and then subsequently loaded, it will still have the old charge rate of £9.35 per item. This cannot be edited because the customer can pay at any time from when the order is created in the same way as they could pay for a prescription when handing it in at the pharmacy counter and collect at a later date.
There are no hard and fast rules around the transition from old charge rate to new charge rate and it is left to the professional judgement of pharmacy staff, see PSNC FAQs here. It should be noted that when an order is loaded into your MedPoint, it has technically left the registered premises and is effectively “out for delivery”.
Inevitably there will be a wash-through period during which you will have a mixture of charge rates being paid depending on the order creation date. The charge paid will be detailed on the Collections Report as usual.
This wash -through period can be minimised by enforcing your order expiration policy and removing any uncollected orders once they expire or at a set date of your choosing e.g. after the first week of April. Patients will then have to collect from the pharmacy counter, at which point staff can choose which charge rate to levy.
Another change taking effect on 1st April is the introduction of HRT prepayment certificates in England. We have already added the new exemption option (W) for patients to select at online checkout and this new exemption reason will show in the daily Collections Report.