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 4.37 million patients registered
to 1015 New Zealand general practices.
As our data is provided by the Ministry of Health, bpacnz has no control over data errors which may occur at the pharmacy,
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 will 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 e.g.
secondary care doctors, midwives, after hours clinics. They are included in this report to provide you with an overall
view of the care received by your registered patients.
What is in your practice report
1. Number of medicines reported
Instead of listing dispensing rates for all 826 subsidised 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 daily or weekly.
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 numbers are reported for your practice, your comparator group
and the national data (all practices grouped together).
4. Cost data
This report includes cost data. 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.
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
