Public Health Scotland

Scotland’s lead national agency for improving and protecting the health and wellbeing of all of Scotland’s people.

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Prescriptions in the Community Edit

There are three datasets included within this open data publication. The 'Data by Prescriber Location' file contains details of items dispensed in the community at prescribing location code level for General Practice data and aggregated by NHS Board for other prescriber location types. The 'Data by Dispenser Location' file contains details of items dispensed in the community by NHS Scotland dispensers at dispenser location code level and excludes Schedule 2 & 3 controlled drugs. The 'Data by Board' file contains details of items dispensed in the community at NHS Board of prescribing level. For all files items are described at British National Formulary (BNF) item description and Dictionary of Medicines & Devices (dm+d) level.\r\n\r\nThe glossary of terms for this publication can be found on the PHS publication page. The date of the next release can be found on our list of forthcoming publications.\r\n\r\nNHS Scotland has introduced a new dispensing contractor payment process and system. Data from May 2023 onwards may not be directly comparable to data published previously and should be interpreted with caution.\r\n\r\nOne area of note is the paid quantity for items with certain formulations may appear significantly higher in data from May 2023 onwards. For example; 1 item of an inhaler may have previously shown a paid quantity of 2 per item. Going forward, this quantity may increase to 240 for 1 item. In these instances, the increased quantity reflects the number of doses or uses within a single item, rather than the quantity of the item itself (e.g. 1 inhaler). Another area of note is that BNF Item Descriptions have changed. Some will not match to those with the same BNF Item code from April 2023 data and earlier.\r\n\r\nThere is a drop in overall GIC for certain BNF sections from May 2023 onwards. The data reflects the costs reimbursed at the time of processing and this has already been identified as anomalous and referred back to the data processor, NHS National Services Scotland Practitioner and Counter Fraud Services Division.

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Additional Info

License	UK Open Government Licence v3.0
Category	Budget / Finance, Health and Social Care
Maintainer	Public Health Scotland
Date Created	2018-01-17
Date Updated	2025-07-08
Original dataset link	https://www.opendata.nhs.scot/dataset/prescriptions-in-the-community