Rejected Items Report

Important update and guidance for the attention of pharmacy contractors, dispensing doctors and appliance suppliers

As part of the Data Capture Validation and Pricing system’s (nDCVP) enhancement, a new Rejected Items Report, including rejection reasons, will be added to your eSchedule for prescriptions dispensed in September 2025 and paid in November 2025. This will be the first time you have received this report since nDCVP went live, and the Rejected Items Report will be part of the monthly suite of eSchedule reports going forward.

Community Pharmacy Scotland was consulted on the rejected item reasons to ensure these are relatable for community pharmacy teams.

Legislative rejections

You may have questions about some of the rejected items highlighted in the report. It’s important to be aware that the nDCVP system processes claims strictly in line with current legislation, so any items that fall outside these parameters will be rejected. More information about the most common reasons for items being rejected is provided below.

Pharmacy First Scotland (PFS) Items (for pharmacy contractors only):

The system processes these items as listed in the Scottish Drug Tariff Part 17 Approved Products List under current legislation. This means the item supplied should be recorded within the prescribed and dispensed message exactly as written on the approved list. This includes selecting only appropriate pack sizes which are included in the approved list.

The Scottish Government recently approved a relaxation of the legislation. As a result, updates to the drug reference data file have been made, and this has resolved a significant number of rejections in line with the relaxation agreement. An nDCVP update is planned in a future release, which we project will further reduce a small number of invalid rejections.

NSS has been making adjustments for PFS items one month in arrears, in line with an agreement between the Scottish Government and CPS. These adjustments, based on an average of £3.78 per item, were introduced because contractors did not have visibility of rejection reasons.

Now that you will have visibility of rejected reasons, we have agreed with the Scottish Government to continue making adjustments as outlined above during a transition period up to and including the January 2026 dispensing month (paid in March 2026). This provides a two-month period for you to review your rejected items report and adjust your claiming practices for PFS items going forward.

Please note that while we are making adjustments for PFS items until and including January 2026 dispensing month, you must not submit individual claims for any rejected PFS adjustments, as this would result in duplicate payments that would need to be retrospectively recovered.

In parallel, we are working closely with CPS, and any recommendations to the PFS Approved List will be presented to the Scottish Government for consideration and approval in December 2025.

After this transition period, these adjustments will cease. Following this, a small number of Pharmacy First items will remain rejected despite being eligible for payment, and a solution has been put in place to adjust these going forward. From the February 2026 dispensing month, adjustments for rejected PFS items eligible for payment will be included in the April 2026 payment and will continue monthly until further notice.

Estimated adjustments for the August and September 2025 dispensing months will be included in the December 2025 payment, and adjustments for October 2025 through to January 2026 will be made in each subsequent month.

Elastic Hosiery Products (for all dispensing contractors):

These products are currently held in the Scottish Drug Tariff Part 4. Following agreed Scottish Government legislation, these products must be prescribed and dispensed as outlined in the document linked above. NSS has recently received agreement from Scottish Government that will allow prescriptions for Elastic Hosiery Products only (from October 2025 dispensing month), written as a specific product rather than by generic title, to be accepted for payment and be reimbursed at the rates specified in Part 4 of the Scottish Drug Tariff.

NSS has been making monthly adjustments to reimburse these items and will continue to do so until the above changes come into effect from October 2025 dispensing month (December 2025 eSchedule).

GP IT system rejections (for pharmacy contractors and dispensing doctor practices)

Other claims are being rejected due to GP IT systems either not being successfully updated with the latest deployment patch or unable to allow the correct addition of Selected List Scheme.

Cyanocobalamin Products:

These are listed under the Selected List Scheme (SLS). As you may be aware, prescriptions for SLS items must be endorsed by the prescriber on both electronic and paper prescriptions. If the endorsement is missing, the claim will be rejected in accordance with legislation.

CPS and NSS are aware that some electronic SLS endorsements are not being applied correctly by a small number of GP practices using the Optum (EMIS) and Vision systems. We are actively working with system suppliers and NHS Board IT teams to ensure the necessary software updates are rolled out as quickly as possible.

Please continue to submit your claims as usual, but please note that the system will continue to reject these if not correctly endorsed by the prescriber. We will need to make retrospective adjustments to reimburse the affected contractors for rejected SLS items with no prescriber endorsement. NSS has initially analysed Cyanocobalamin claims, as these represent the vast majority of SLS rejections from March 2025 (from when the Cyanocobalamin issue began). This analysis will continue until we receive confirmation that the small number of GP practices have been successfully upgraded, after which all retrospective adjustments will be reimbursed.

Further analysis and adjustments will also be required for all other SLS items which have been rejected due to GP Practices not having up to date software versions and applying the relevant SLS endorsement.

During this process, you don’t need to contact us directly. We’ll keep you updated through this webpage as things progress. However, if you do have a query about a rejected item that is not covered in this briefing and feel it requires follow-up, you can contact us via email at nss.sdpaymentenquirysolutions@nhs.scot.