Prescribing Monitoring Documents (PMD)

"PMD provides financial information about prescribing costs against budgets."

Each month the Prescribing Monitoring Documents provide financial statements automatically to:

• Department of Health
  
• Primary Care Trusts
  
• General Practitioners
  
• Community Trusts.

and, with the permission of the PCT, on request to:

• Regional Offices/Directorates
  
• Strategic Health Authorities

The purpose of the statements is to show the cost of prescribing, to enable prescribers to manage the drugs element of their unified budgets

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 the previous years spending data). The accuracy is determined by local factors at a local level
  
• 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.

Future Development

Reports will be available from the PPA web site, www.ppa.nhs.uk, for PCTs and StHAs from December 2002.

Itemised Prescribing Payment Report (IPP)

"A report used to show the apportionment of each month's national prescribing costs between Primary Care Trusts."

The Itemised Prescribing Payment Report is produced by the Prescription Pricing Authority on a monthly basis.

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 and to calculate the initial shares for the following month's disbursement.

The recipients of this report are:

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

The report shows the prescribing costs for the appropriate reporting organisation on all cash limited elements of prescribing. The figures shown on the report 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 Health Authority e.g. VAT, dental prescriptions, national unidentified prescriptions etc.)
  
• Local payments.

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.

Future Development

Reports will be available from the PPA web site, www.ppa.nhs.uk, for PCTs and StHAs from December 2002.