A new practice payments and pensions system is failing to give managers the detailed data they expect, raising concerns that key payments information is missing, it has been revealed.

The problems with the system, developed by contractors Capita, go beyond “teething problems,” according to a joint letter to NHS England. The letter has been signed by Dr Richard Vautrey, chair of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, and Nicola Davies, director of the Institute of General Practice Management. It says that the signatories “lack confidence” that Primary Care Support England is dealing with the issues that have been raised with it in a timely manner.

The new system was introduced at the beginning of the month and both organisations say they have heard a high volume of concerns, particularly with pensions and practice payments. According to the letter, “On practice payments, we are now hearing reports of incorrect amounts, missing payments, and even double payments. As with pensions information, there is a lack of detail in statements which is making it needlessly difficult for practices to check whether they are correct, and it seems there is even confusion as to what some payments are for.”

Dr Vautrey and Ms Davies added: “On the system generally, while we appreciate that it would look and feel different to what went before it, the consensus seems to be that it is far from intuitive and lacks much of the functionality that users were expecting.”

A bulletin from Primary Care Support England, has listed a series of problems with missing data, setting out how the organisation says they are being resolved. It says: “Since the launch we have been carefully monitoring all aspects of the new service. We can confirm that payment runs are being processed successfully through the new system. Since it went live at the beginning of this month we have successfully processed 88,000 payments.” It says that eight practices were affected by a problem affecting drug recovery payments, adding: “We have identified that there were some missing payments in June for a small number of practices. Overall, we’ve identified that this relates to less than one percent of all payments generated. Special payments are being made in June to rectify this and the affected practices will be contacted shortly.”