Dispensing by Contractor
The Business Services Organisation (BSO) is the provider of the data. Prescription dispensing data is obtained from the BSO’s prescribing and dispensing information systems. The data covers prescriptions that are prescribed by a GP or Nurse (within a main GP Practice), subsequently dispensed (by a Community Pharmacist, Appliance Supplier or Dispensing Doctor) and submitted to BSO for payment.
The data includes all prescribed medicines, dressings and appliances that are dispensed each month. If a patient does not take a prescription to a dispenser and get it provided to them, then the information will not be included in the dataset. Private prescriptions are not included in the data, nor are dental prescribing items or hospice items. Post-payment adjustments are also excluded.
For each GP practice in Northern Ireland, the following information is provided: the number of prescribed items that are dispensed and the number of items dispensed by the individual contractors.
The release of the data is dependent on the completion of pharmacy payment processes but will be published below on or before the 10th of each month. CSV version of the files can be found on the Open Data NI website.
Further information and advice on using the data can be found here.
Monthly Datasets
Prescribing information for October 2021 to January 2022 has been revised following a merger with practices 556 and 532 on 30th September 2021. Prescribing previously allocated to practice 556 between October 2021 and January 2022 has now been allocated to practice 532.