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 PPA 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 (This forecast calculation is 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 (paper and electronic)
• Primary Care Trusts (paper and electronic)
• Strategic Health Authorities (electronic)
• Practices (paper and electronic).