The power of prescribing data was described in a joint presentation by Dispensing Doctor Solutions director Prad Savania and NHS BSA Data & Insight Senior Manager Margaret Dockey.
Savania described the NHS BSA’s ePACT2 data set as “a great aid for dispensing GPs”. Among its benefits:
- identify detailed prescribing patterns
- review reimbursement details
- identify dispensing losses
- identify cost efficiencies for NHS budgets
- assist in formulary development.
The data set, accessed via the NHSBSA portal, offers the following functionality:
- practice prescription data
- interactive reports and dashboards
- high-level data summary down to individual prescription item
- build bespoke reports
- export reports and dashboards
- improve clinical care and improve profitability.
Key reports include:
- Top Twenty by NIC
- Personally Administered Items
- Specialist Drugs Prescribing
- Total Practice Prescribing
- Prescribing by BNF Chapter
- Generic Savings Report
- Practice Detailed Prescribing Information (PDPI): ranked by item volume, single highest cost.
Joining Savania on day two of the DDA conference, Margaret Dockey challenged prescribers to use data to improve clinical outcomes and ensure medicines are used to best effect. She asked GPs how they would know if patients:
- were receiving four or more different anti-depressants concurrently
- were receiving 10 or more unique medicines
- had an anticholinergic burden score of six or more
- were prescribed gabapentin and an opioid in the same month
- were receiving three or more antipsychotics concurrently?
She said: “If we are going to overcome our polypharmacy, mental health prescribing, opioid prescribing challenges then answers to these questions are undoubtably useful.”
She also explained that NHSBSA shares data with organisations for research and development purposes. One example is Public Health England which maps prescribing data against patients on the cancer registry to establish any correlation between the drugs taken before and after diagnosis of cancer. Other future projects include new datasets for care home prescribing and Ministry of Defence prescribing,
View the presentation (PS & MD).