Action your Unpaid items on the MYS portal

Latest data obtained from the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) shows there were over 194,000 unpaid or Referred Back (RB) items on the Manage Your Service (MYS) portal awaiting action by pharmacy owners. Around a third (65,000) of these unpaid items have been left incomplete for over six months, with around 2,700 due to expire within the next month.

Based on the current average national Net Ingredient Cost (NIC) per item of around £8 per item, we estimate that the total reimbursement value of the outstanding 194k unpaid items equates to approximately £1.55m or around £150 per pharmacy, on average. Approximately, 400 pharmacies have over 100 outstanding unpaid items with one pharmacy having a total of 2,637 unpaid items awaiting completion. Delays in completing unpaid items can affect the timing of payments and create avoidable cashflow pressures for pharmacy owners. 

Unpaid items are generated when the NHSBSA is unable to process a prescription item for payment due to missing or incomplete endorsed information. These are returned to the pharmacy via the MYS portal (under the ‘Unpaid items‘ tab) so that the required information can be added by the pharmacy to allow the NHSBSA to process such items for payment. Pharmacy owners receive an email to their pharmacy NHSmail account when new unpaid items are returned by the NHSBSA. The image below shows how unpaid items appear on the MYS portal.

It is important to note that unpaid items are only held on MYS for a period of 18 months from the date they are first returned to the pharmacy for action. If pharmacy owners have not completed and returned any outstanding unpaid items before this deadline has passed, the items will be deleted from the system. Therefore, pharmacy teams are advised to regularly check the ‘Unpaid items‘ tab on the MYS portal and ensure that any outstanding unpaid items are completed and returned promptly to the NHSBSA for payment.

For further information on  unpaid items see our Referred back and disallowed items webpage. For practical guidance on managing unpaid items and submitting them via MYS portal watch our Funding & Reimbursement Shorts video on referred back items.