Request

‘It would be intresting to know how many percentage of complaints are received by the NHS prepayment exemption service. About not being correctly notified when attaining the the age of 60. Have received an enquiry letter and not had the stregnth to fight their case and just paid the PCN. I understand all complaints are categoried so this information should be easily sort.’

On 22 August 2023 you clarified the following

‘I require the information for the past 5 years September 2018 to September 2023. There have probably been thousands over the years.’

Q1. How many complaints were received when a patient received an enquiry letter within 9 months of their 60th birthday. Prescription Exemption Checking Service (penalty charges)” because their direct debit was not collected and who were not corectly notified that their expired prepayment certificate would not be auto renewed.

Q2. How many of those affected just payed the pcn and surcharge prescription charge because they were not well enough or strong enough to fight the pcn. How many successfully fought the Enquiry letter PCN as I did.

Response

Question 1

The complaint reason ‘Turning 60 within 9 months of cert expiring’ was only added to the system which we use to log complaints on 18th August 2022 and therefore, the requested information is not held prior to this date. Since this date, we have had 395 complaints logged under this category. Please be advised that this figure only includes complaints received following receipt of an enquiry letter within 9 months of their 60th birthday only.

NHSBSA do not record the additional granular level of requested information as follows: ‘because their direct debit was not collected and who were not correctly notified that their expired prepayment certificate would not be auto renewed’ and therefore, this requested information is not held by NHSBSA. We can confirm, however, that NHSBSA issue reminders to all customers in receipt of a 12-month certificate with information about what steps are required.

Question 2

Please be advised that NHSBSA do not record the granular level of requested information as follows: ' because they were not well enough or strong enough to fight the pcn..’ and therefore, this requested information is not held by NHSBSA.

Out of the 395 complaints received following receipt of an enquiry letter within 9 months of their 60th birthday, we are unable to confirm if the requested information of how many were paid and how many were cancelled is held or not because in doing so, NHSBSA estimates that the cost of complying with the appropriate limit.

NHSBSA’s systems do not allow for this information to be extracted as a standalone piece of data. Consequently, it would require a manual check each individual record to understand the outcome of the certificate. NHSBSA estimates that this manual exercise to retrieve this information would exceed the appropriate limit set out in section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Currently, this is set at £450 for NHSBSA, which equates to 18 hours of an officer’s time.

NHSBSA calculate that compliance with this request would require a reasonable estimate of 1 hour to obtain the reference numbers for each of the 395 cases from our internal system and the subsequent review of each record which would take 5 – 10 minutes per case.

On the basis that the review of each case takes the shortest reasonable estimate of 5 minutes: 5 minutes per review x 395 cases = 32.9 hours.

On the basis that the review of each case takes the longest reasonable estimate of 10 minutes: 10 minutes per review x 395 cases = 65.8 hours.

In addition of the 1 hour for obtaining reference numbers, this would take between a total of 33.9 hours – 66.8 hours to comply with the request and therefore, exceeds the appropriate limit of 18 hours of an officer’s time.

Under section 16 to provide advice and assistance, NHSBSA may be able to comply with a refined request. Please be advised that we would be able to start reviewing each of the 395 cases until we have reached the appropriate limit under the FOIA 2000; however, please note that this would not provide the full, accurate picture.

Alternatively, we would be able to confirm how PCNs have been paid and how many have been cancelled across the entire service, but this would not be broken down into the reasons, for example, turning 60 within 9 months of cert expiring. We can obtain this data within the 18 hours as it is recorded on our complaints system which we can pull as a standalone piece of data.

Data Queries

If you have any queries regarding the data provided, or if you plan on publishing the data please contact foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above reference. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement: “NHSBSA Copyright 2023” This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence.

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.