Warning to check prescription certificate dates after patients fined for NHS fraud
A health watchdog has issued a warning after patients were fined for unintentionally using prescription pre-payment certificates after their expiry date.
Healthwatch Shropshire, a local watchdog and health and social care champion, said it had been contacted by several patients over the issue.
The certificates are bought in advance from the NHS and can save money for those people who have a lot of regular prescriptions, but are not eligible for free prescriptions.
Healthwatch said the patients assumed that staff at pharmacies would check the certificate when they present it to collect their medication – but this did not happen and the staff accepted out-of-date certificates.
The patients were then fined by the NHS Business Services Authority (NHS BSA).
The NHS BSA has told the patients that pharmacists are not required to check that certificates are valid and that it is the patient’s responsibility.
Lynn Cawley, Healthwatch Shropshire Chief Officer, said: “The expiry date is printed on the certificate but most people assume in this day and age that there is a system behind the prepayment scheme that will flag up if the certificate is out of date and they don’t check.
"The fines charged can run in to hundreds of pounds and so we advise everybody using the certificates to check the date before they use it each time.
"We know that this has happened across the country and would ask people to contact us if they have had problems around the certificates so we can feed the information back to Healthwatch England.
"People can contact us online at healthwatchshropshire.co.uk or ring us on 01743 237884.”
