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Welcome to your annual practice report

Methods

The data in this report is based on two of the Ministry of Health’s National Collections. The collections used in this report contain data provided to Sector Services (formerly HealthPAC) and National Collections and Reporting through the General Transaction Processing System:

  • The Pharmaceutical Collection holds claim data submitted by pharmacies for all community dispensings of subsidised medicines.
  • The Primary Health Organisation Enrolment Collection holds patient enrolment data for 4.32 million patients registered to 1028 New Zealand general practices.

As our data is provided by the Ministry of Health, bpacnz has no control over errors which may occur at the pharmacy, laboratory, Sector Services or Ministry of Health. Some errors may also be due to rounding.

In this report, cost is the standard price at which a medicine is supplied to wholesalers, exclusive of GST, dispensing fees, markup and rebates. Therefore the cost listed is not necessarily the actual cost of this medicine.

Data has been excluded for patients who are not registered to a practice in the PHO Enrolment Collection. Enrolled patients accounted for 99% of pharmaceutical dispensings recorded in the National Collections. Data has also been excluded when a National Health Index (NHI) number was not recorded for the patient.

This report includes data on dispensed subsidised medicines. Any medicines prescribed to your patients that were not dispensed by a community pharmacy, or are unsubsidised, will not appear on this report.

Important Note

Some medicines dispensed for your registered patients are likely to have been prescribed by New Zealand healthcare professionals who do not work at your practice, and will not necessarily be listed if you audit your Practice Management System. They are included in this report to provide you with an overall view of the care received by your registered patients.

Individual prescribing reports

If you would like to review your annual individual prescribing report please log in. You can then find your report by navigating to Your personalised reports

What is in your practice report

1. Number of medicines reported

Instead of listing dispensing rates for all 813 medicines available we have included the 250 most commonly dispensed medicines. These make up 94% of all dispensings in the community in New Zealand.

2. Number of items

Item numbers refer to stat dispensings (entire three month supply) and initial dispensings only – these numbers do not include repeat dispensings, e.g. if a patient is taking a long-term medicine and was compliant they should have four initial dispensings per year for that medicine. This eliminates the ‘over-counting’ of medicines that have more frequent dispensing rates, e.g. methadone which may be dispensed weekly or daily.

3. Comparator Groups

To allow you to make comparisons with practices whose patient demographics are similar to yours we have created comparator groups. These comparator groups are made up of ten practices whose patient populations are similar to yours in:

  • Gender
  • Age
  • Ethnicity
  • Deprivation

This report will show data for your practice and your comparator practices*.

You will see in the data tables throughout the report that there is a number for your practice, your comparator group and the national data (all practices grouped together).

You will see in the data tables throughout the report that there is a number for your practice, the quartile you belong to and the national data (all practices grouped together).

* Click here to find out more about your comparator practices

4. Cost data

This report includes cost data (Pages 6 – 8). This is to provide you with a general understanding of the highest cost medicines used each year in New Zealand and for patients in your practice.

5. Laboratory data

In July this year our contract to provide laboratory test utilisation data and education to general practitioners in New Zealand finished. Therefore this report does not contain an overview of your laboratory testing.

Feedback

We are always trying to improve our reports therefore we would like to know how useful you find them. We would also like to hear if you have any further suggestions for presenting and comparing annual prescribing data. Email us at: contact@bpac.org.nz

Download/view an annual report for a sample practice

Click here for a pdf of the annual prescribing report, showing data from a sample practice. If you are a primary care prescriber registered with us, you can view the report containing your own prescribing data by logging in and navigating to Your personalised reports.