Request

‘‘‘Hello, thank you for fulfilling my previous request at https://applications.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/FOI/foiRequestDetail.do?bo_id=10442 Could I please request the same data, but for any newer months for which data is available? i.e. august 2020 to august 2021 thanks and kind regards,’’’

Response

A copy of the information is attached.

This data is made up of 2 separate spreadsheets for May and June 2021.

There is a completed file for each month. FOI8592 has 2 files (February 2019 and March 2019)

Source System – ISP (National MIS Files)

NHSBSA Prescription Services process prescriptions for Pharmacy Contractors, Appliance Contractors, Dispensing Doctors and Personal Administration with information then used to make payments to pharmacists and appliance contractors in England for prescriptions dispensed in primary care settings (other arrangements are in place for making payments to Dispensing Doctors and Personal Administration). This involves processing over 1 billion prescription items and payments totalling over £9 billion each year. The information gathered from this process is then used to provide information on costs and trends in prescribing in England and Wales to over 25,000 registered NHS and Department of Health and Social Care users.

This report consists of a management information file detailing monthly Community Pharmacy and Appliance Payments by type of payment and contractor account. Payments include all drug costs, fees, patient charges, locally authorised payments, etc. Other details such as the numbers of items dispensed, patient’s charges collected are also included.

The management information file reflects the contractor's payment and prescription data associated with the sustainability and transformation partnerships (STPs) structure at the relevant payment date.

The data contained within the files can be interpreted correctly by using the ‘MIS Glossary’ available under ‘Management Information Spreadsheet (MIS) Report’ at https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/information-services-portal-isp/isp-report-information .

The data in column METHADONE PAYMT and ADD FEE-2E within the Pharmacy dataset have been removed following Information Governance policy.

Appliance Contractors data within the MIS- Report shows data for the following month. (E.g. MIS-Report for January 19 will show February 19 Appliance Contractor data).

There is a list of previous requests and which months we have provided called MIS FOI Requests in IST/Reference – please add new requests and months provided to this.

Please note that this request and our response is published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-18005