NEED CEO Michael Brodie of NHS Business Services Authority email address.....anyone

Missy-D1956

A friend of mine whom is seriously ill and is on benefits that entitle him to have free prescriptions has been and is still being hounded by the NHS Business Services Authority.
Over the last 8 months he has received 6 Penalty Charge Notices from the NHS Business Services Authority.
As he is unable to sort these out so I help him as a friend.
Has anyone got the email address for Michael Brodie the CEO at NHS Business Services Authority or a direct telephone number
Any other ideas would be welcome

calcotti

They can challenge the penalty charges https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/pay-or-challenge-penalty-charge-notice

[Deleted User]

Can he be put in contact with any social service/liason services at the hospital. They can often sort things like this out.

Or find out if there is a PALs service attached to the hospital.

But first port of call is the email address given above.

[Deleted User]

What benefits is your friend on?

Missy-D1956

Yet another PCN ??? Saw on T.V. recently that they are sending masses of these by mistake.
How the hell am I gonna stop it if they keep coming.
His on UC ESA and PIP

calcotti

Missy-D1956 wrote: »

Yet another PCN ??? Saw on T.V. recently that they are sending masses of these by mistake.
How the hell am I gonna stop it if they keep coming.
His on UC ESA and PIP

If he is getting UC and ESA I infer the ESA is contribution based and the UC is topping up his benefit.
The ESA therefore does not give entitlement to free prescriptions.
The criteria for qualifying through UC are here https://www.nhs.uk/using-the-nhs/help-with-health-costs/help-with-health-costs-for-people-getting-universal-credit/#criteria

In order to get the charges overturned they need to provide a print out of their UC statements for the assessment periods immediately prior to each of the dates the prescription was claimed.

In future when they claim a free prescription, if the prescription form has no box for Universal Credit (I don't think any do yet - only 6 years since UC started), they should tick the income based JSA box.

If your friend has previously ticked the ESA box NHS will have checked the ESA records and discovered that he is not getting income based ESA and therefore does not qualify for free prescriptions through ESA.

Recent MP report very critical of the complexity of the rules around free prescriptions and the lengthy failure of DWP and NHS to make things clearer. See https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmpubacc/2038/2038.pdf

NedS

calcotti wrote: »

In future when they claim a free prescription, if the prescription form has no box for Universal Credit (I don't think any do yet - only 6 years since UC started), they should tick the income based JSA box.

This is the advice I had previously heard.

When visiting the opticians last week with my wife, the optician wrote CLAIMING Universal Credit on the form under the list of other options. I guess we will see how that works out

You would think the person doing the checks would check all qualifying benefits before issuing a fine, but the NHS obviously do not extend that level of care to vulnerable people. Sad.

calcotti

NedS wrote: »

This is the advice I had previously heard.

When visiting the opticians last week with my wife, the optician wrote CLAIMING Universal Credit on the form under the list of other options. I guess we will see how that works out

You would think the person doing the checks would check all qualifying benefits before issuing a fine, but the NHS obviously do not extend that level of care to vulnerable people. Sad.

The difficulty is that claiming UC, of itself, does not qualify a claimant for free prescriptions. They have to be claiming UC and not have earnings over the earnings threshold. This means that someone on UC with variable earnings could qualify for free prescriptions in one month but not the next (based on the previous months earnings). Completely absurd and unreasonable to expect claimants to be able to follow this.

Muttleythefrog

I've just successfully challenged a PCN for dental charges regarding my wife because the damned forms don't accommodate her surname so they get a name mismatch. You need to find out exactly what is triggering the notices... and if it is the benefit declaration study what has been said above. Challenge using the link above... I did it otherwise via email nhsbsa.decs@nhsbsa.nhs.uk and got a response within 1 working day. If you get stuck on email addresses wanting to raise things higher up then maybe as a last resort try via that address.