GP Prescribing Data

The data covers prescriptions that are prescribed in Northern Ireland by GPs or Nurses (within a GP Practice), that are subsequently dispensed by a community pharmacist, dispensing doctor or appliance supplier and are finally submitted to the Business Services Organisation (BSO) for payment and have been paid. Full user guidance is available at: https://gpdatasets.hscni.net/ The Gross Cost is the basic price of a drug, i.e. the price listed in the National Drug Tariff, concessionary price list, or in standard price lists. Please note concessionary prices have to be approved by the Department of Health (DoH). Where DoH instructs BSO to apply reimbursement prices for a particular month after payment has already been made, these are paid as an adjustment and these prices are known as late concessionary prices. Prior to May 2024 late concessionary prices were not included in the data. From May 2024 the dataset has been amended to include late concessionary price updates. Following the development of a new database, data for August 2021 onwards may show a change in quantity for some inhalers, sprays and solutions. Where quantities were previously listed as a device, this may now show the amount of doses dispensed. Improvements have been made to BNF chapter classifications to ensure consistency between Northern Ireland and England. Previously over 99.5% of items prescribed and dispensed in Northern Ireland had the same BNF chapter classification as England. Of the 0.5% of items that originally differed in classification, around 99.6% referred to items previously counted as Appliances (Chapter 21) being reclassified into the Eye (Chapter 11), Ear, Nose and Oropharynx (Chapter 12) and Skin (Chapter 13) chapters. Caution should therefore be exercised when comparing figures prior to October 2021 for chapters 11, 12, 13 and 21. After examining discrepancies relating to the BNF, developments have been made to GP Prescribing data following an improved extract from the English BSA. Therefore, from September 2018 onwards, the data will show a more fully populated ‘BNF Code’ column. Some changes to BNF Chapter and Section will have occurred as part of this process.