TCM0202020 - Passported benefits - exemption / health costs: Exemption certificate - exceptions (Info)

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHS BSA) is part of the Department of Health (DoH) and it is their responsibility to issue exemption certificates for those families who are entitled to help with health costs.

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) provides the NHS BSA with details of all families who satisfy such criteria.

The details that are passed to the NHS BSA are

  • customer’s NINO
  • customer’s title
  • customer’s forename and surname
  • customer’s address
  • children’s details (surname, forename, date of birth ).

HMRC identifies families that satisfy the exemption certificate criteria and pass that information every month (around the sixth of each month) to the NHS BSA.

The NHS BSA will return any exceptions back to the HMRC. The data will be password protected. The NHS BSA will inform a designated person within HMRC what the password is.

The rejected data will be returned on an Excel spreadsheet by the NHS BSA, emailed to a designated person, they will also supply a password to use to unlock the data.

Data will be rejected in the following circumstances

  • there is no title for the customer
  • the title is not in the correct format - for example ‘Mr’, ‘Mrs’, ‘Miss’
  • there are spaces in the title - for example, ‘M r’, ‘Mr s’
  • there is no forename
  • There is no surname
  • the postcode is not in the correct format
  • there are duplicate children on the case.

Once the details have been corrected by HMRC, the customer’s details will be selected on the next monthly extract.

Note: The NHS BSA does not have the facility to amend or change the customer’s records, nor does it have access to any other customer details other than those stated above.

There is an Action Guide for this subject, select TCM0202040 to access it.