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A south London pharmacy must pay back £1,176 to the NHS after 42 of its claims for New Medicine Service (NMS) consultations were judged to be duplicates.

Duncan’s Chemist in Bromley accepted the original NHS Business Services Authority’s (NHSBSA) clawback decision with regard to 39 of the claims, but appealed against the decision on three others in a bid that was recently rejected by NHS Resolution.

As part of its post-payment verification exercise for NMS consultations in 2023-24, in 2025 the NHSBSA looked at 542 claims submitted by the pharmacy between October 2023 and March 2024.

The verification exercise targeted 445 “outliers” with high numbers of NMS claims and those who claimed for a large number of consultations in one month only, as well as some who were not outliers but were selected at random.

The NHSBSA found that a number of claims submitted by Duncan’s Chemist were made for the same patient on the same day.

The pharmacy explained some patients appeared multiple times “because their prescriptions were sent at different times of day for NMS eligible items and some prescriptions were sent on different days and not collected, so the patient would have collected several prescriptions for different NMS eligible items on the same day” according to NHS Resolution’s account of the appeal.

This explanation was rejected by the NHSBSA, citing the terms of service which state: “If more than one medicine covered by the service is prescribed at the same time, that instance of the service will cover all those medicines.”

The pharmacy also explained that some records were missing due to its changing PMR providers in February 2025.

In the case of three claims that the NHSBSA judged to be duplicates, the pharmacy was able to provide screenshots as additional evidence to support an appeal bid. However, these were also found to be instances where multiple claims had been submitted for the same date.

NHS Resolution’s head of appeals commented: “I concur with the NHS BSA’s view that the wording of the specification does not intend that a single instance of patient engagement may be claimed for more than once, regardless of the number of items dispensed.”

In relation to Duncan’s Chemists’ request to be allowed to pay back the money in four instalments “in order to minimise the operational and financial impact on the pharmacy,” NHS Resolution advised the pharmacy and the NHSBSA “to engage further to discuss any repayment plans”.

Duncan’s Chemist has been approached for comment.

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