Prescribing, Dispensing & Financial Management Services (PDFM)

The single point of access for receiving and accessing a range of reports for PCT, SHA and National users from the NHSBSA PPD website, www.ppa.nhs.uk

Prescribing Monitoring Documents (PMD)

PMD provides prescribers, pharmaceutical and prescribing advisors with monthly financial information about prescribing costs against budgets, to enable management of the drugs element of unified budgets.

Data within the PMD report is updated on a monthly basis. There are 13 months of historical PMD reports available.

Statements are issued every month and show:

• the indicative prescribing budget for the current financial year (not shown in April or May)
• total monthly expenditure
• cumulative expenditure (April to current month)
• forecast out-turn (based on information provided by the Department of Health. It is based on a spending pattern, which has been calculated using previous years spending data). The accuracy is determined by local factors at a local level (not shown in April or May)
• the number of dispensing days in the month and year to date.

The annual statement produced for March shows the actual expenditure for the financial year.

Figures are based on the 'actual' cost of drugs prescribed. 'Actual' cost is calculated by deducting the National Average Discount from the basic price of the prescription items, then adding an allowance for the containers in which the drugs are dispensed.

The recipients of this report are:

• Department of Health
• Primary Care Trusts
• Strategic Health Authorities
• Practices.

Itemised Prescribing Payment Report (IPP)

A report for Finance Officers, Pharmaceutical and Prescribing Advisors showing the monthly apportionment of national cash limited elements of prescriptions dispensed. The report is used to adjust the proportion of the payment already charged to a Primary Care Trust at the beginning of the month, to ensure a fair distribution, based on levels of prescribing, and to calculate the initial shares for the following month's disbursement.

Data within the IPP report is updated on a monthly basis. There are 13 months of historical IPP reports available.

The report shows the prescribing costs for all cash limited elements of prescribing. The figures are based on actual cost and can be broken down into the following elements:

• GP/practice nurse prescribing
• Share of unidentified GP/practice prescribing
• Share of unidentified deputising service prescribing
• Community Unit/PCT nurse prescribing
• Adjustment to charge statements
• Share of lost batches
• Share of National Reallocation Factor
• Elements for which resources have been retained centrally (costs not directly attributed to a PCT e.g. VAT, dental prescriptions, National unidentified prescriptions etc.)
  

Each element reported is based on 20% of the previous month's costs and 80% of the current month's costs. This reflects the actual payment made to contractors, which is made up of an 80% advance on the current month's registration and the balance from the previous month's payment. Details of local payments, practice payments and Medicines Use Reviews are also included in the report.

The recipients of this report are:

• Department of Health
• Strategic Health Authorities
• Primary Care Trusts

The Prescribing Toolkit

The Prescribing Toolkit enables pharmaceutical and prescribing advisors to compare their prescribing performance against other prescribing organisations using predefined drug lists and indicators to help identify areas for improvement.

This service is available to the following authorised users for performance management purposes:

• Department of Health (DH)
• Strategic Health Authorities (SHA)
• Primary Care Trusts (PCT)
• National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)
• Healthcare Commission
• National Prescribing Centre (NPC)
• Health and Social Care Information Centre Prescribing Support Unit.

Data is updated on a quarterly basis and is available for the previous thirty six months. Annual reports are provided which compare the latest financial year with the previous two years. Quarterly reports are also provided which compare the latest quarter with the equivalent quarters in the previous two years.

Information is available at a variety of levels: -

• Practice
• Primary Care Trust
• Strategic Health Authority.

Data is presented in both tabular and graphical formats to compare it with predefined comparators as follows:

• Potential Generic Savings
• Specialist Drugs Costs
• Performance Prescribing Indicators
• Cost Comparators
• Volume Comparators
• Nurse Prescribing Indicators
• Healthcare Commission Prescribing Performance Indicators

More information is available at http://ratings2004.healthcarecommission.org.uk.

• Population Datasets
  This provides data available from non PPD data sources which may be of use when analysing prescribing. This includes mortality for different causes, DETR index of Multiple Depravation and Low Income Scheme Index (LISI) scores for PCTs.

For each of the above a user can also view:

• where applicable, drug list at individual presentation level
• where applicable, the prescribing measures weightings applied (1997 or 2001), e.g.
  • Prescribing Units (PUs)
• ASTRO PUs - Age, Sex and Temporary Resident Originated Prescribing Units
• STAR PUs - Specific Therapeutic group Age-sex Related Prescribing Units
• Nurse Prescribing Formulary PUs.

Two National bodies provide professional input:

• the Prescribing Indicator National Group (define prescribing indicators, potential generic savings and specialist drugs reports)

• the Health and Social Care Information Centre Prescribing Support Unit (defines the comparators).

The PPD welcomes feedback to help further develop the service at Toolkit.feedback@ppa.nhs.uk

Prescriber Dispenser 2 (PD2) Report

The PD2 provides PCT pharmaceutical and prescribing advisors with a quarterly PCT level summary of prescribing. It helps identify prescribing that warrants further analysis through the ePACT.net service.

The PD2 report shows items, costs, list sizes and averages for prescribing by individual prescriber within each of their practices.

The data is updated each financial quarter and is available two months after the quarter end. The data is available at the following levels:

• Prescriber
• Practice
• PCT.

It shows whether the prescriber is a GP, supplementary prescriber or nurse and whether the nurse can prescribe from the nurse formulary or the extended nurse formulary.

It also provides a summary of the prescribing and averages for the PCT itself. This summary is broken down by:

• prescribing
• dispensing
• list sizes
• nurse formulary prescribers
• extended nurse formulary prescribers
• supplementary prescribers.

The PD2 is available to:

• Primary Care Trusts (PCTs),
• Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs)
• National Users.

ePACT Offline Reports