PPCs enable customers who are not otherwise exempt to gain financial help with NHS Prescription costs, allowing them to pay a fixed price for a three or 12-month certificate.
As a result of using allpay’s cloud-based platform, the NHSBSA has reduced administration time and contact centre queries, providing staff with a user-friendly platform to set-up and manage payments on behalf of customers.
The NHSBSA was looking to consolidate the number of suppliers it utilises for payment services. Combined across all payment channels, its collects more than £640 million per annum, providing a range of critical central services to NHS organisations, NHS contractors, patients and the public.
As part of this project, its existing contract for a direct debit service for PPCs was expiring at the end of 2016, and it required a new provider to carry out the service from 2017, which would include the migration of nearly 700,000 direct debit instructions, generating approximately 7 million transactions per annum.
Following a procurement exercise, allpay was appointed through the national OJEU-compliant procurement framework, Consortium Procurement – available to call off by public sector bodies – providing access to a range of electronic payment solutions across cash, debit/credit card and direct debit services.
allpay’s project team engaged with NHSBSA teams in October to scope out its requirements in detail, which were then mapped against allpay’s solution. A migration timeline was produced that allowed for data cleansing, migration testing and training for call centre staff ahead of the go-live weekend in February 2017.
The proposed solution allowed NHSBSA to utilise allpay’s RESTful APIs, providing a direct link into its CRM system to provide an integrated solution when creating new direct debit mandates. NHSBSA staff would then manage any amendments and provide customer support utilising allpay’s cloud-based Direct Debit Portal, providing visibility on future and historic payment schedules and failed payments.
The solution would allow NHSBSA’s 300 call centre staff to set-up, amend and cancel schedules, with allpay automating the submission to Bacs and allowing NHSBSA to access payment information files on collections, setups and failures the following morning. As part of the solution, allpay also provides an automated re-attempt on failed collections five working days after the original payment failure.
A later requirement was added to the project scope for allpay to produce and despatch the correspondence letters confirming set-up, amend and cancellations to the customer. As allpay offers this service as part of its fully managed solution it was able to deliver this within the NHSBSA’s go-live date, producing nearly 100,000 customer letters a month.