Some practices are losing thousands of Pounds due to poor management of charge paid prescriptions, said Alastair Carmichael from Dispensing Doctor Experts in a talk at the DDA conference entitled:  Protecting your business is vital – a practical guide to SWOT analysis and more.

The presentation, which was sponsored by Teva, focused on the pages of practices’ Primary Care Support England (PCSE) statements that should be treated as key performance indicators (KPIs).

Mr Carmichael told the audience that the report on deducted patient charges should match practices’ internal records of what was counted and declared. If practices become aware of great differences, they should email Primary Care Support England (PCSE) for a wrong group movement report.

In the whistlestop tour of a PCSE statement, practices were reminded that statements would relate to dispensing activity of two months prior, ie, the June statement details April dispensing.

Good dispensary managers would view reports covering overall dispensed item numbers, chargeable items, referred back/disallowed items, and the monthly net drug cost reimbursement.

In terms of measuring performance, Mr Carmichael suggested the following KPIs:

• The total number of prescriptions detailed on PCSE should not be significantly different to the FP34 submission
• The total number of disallowed items should be zero or low single figures
• Net drug cost reimbursement for month should be more than the net monthly purchase costs. Practices were advised to take an average figure for three to four months to gain a true average picture
• Dispensing fees report should list only one unit level for dispensing fees, indicating that fees are being split equally between all prescribers. Mr Carmichael advised: “If you see more than one unit level, ask yourself how better you could ‘spread the love’ among all prescribers.

View the presentation: Protecting your business is vital – a practical guide to SWOT analysis and more.