Refunds on NPA insurance premiums

The reason for this is because of the confict of interest that it may face when attempting to decide how a matter should be handled in a confict situation involving both the NPA member (pharmacist employer) and the employee or locum.

It would appear, from explanations that we are being given from new PDA members that pharmacists too are coming to realise that taking out a PI insurance scheme with the NPA may not be in their best interests. In recent months numerous pharmacists have contacted the PDA to suggest that they were now moving their indemnity arrangements from the NPA to the PDA.

However, some of these pharmacists have told us that when they contacted the NPA to ask for
a refund on the balance of their cancelled policy, it was explained to them that the NPA does not give refunds.

We have discovered that some of these pharmacists have decided to join the PDA immediately and simply let the NPA policy come to its natural expiry.

We do not know whether this is a formal NPA decision, or whether it is simply an individual NPA staff member decision.

We believe that that as a matter of good practice refunds should always be available to policy holders although we do accept that the NPA should be allowed to make an administrative charge for providing such a facility.

Consequently, we have written to the NPA for clarifcation.

We ask any pharmacist who is experiencing diffculties in this respect to contact the PDA for assistance.