Primary Care Trust Prescribing Data - April to June 2011

This release contains data for the quarters April - June 2008 to April - June 2011. Other quarters will be added subsequently.

Note that there have been changes to PCTs from 1 April 2010. In some cases these are minor changes to names. In such cases the earlier name will be retained for consistency. The PCTs East and North Hertfordshire and West Hertfordshirehave merged to form Hertfordshire. Solihull PCT gave up its Care Trust status and changed its PCT code in May 2011 and so there will be a discontinuity in data between quarters before April 2011 and subsequent data. Some prescriptions will continue to appear for the old PCTs for up to 6 months as prescriptions are valid for that period.

The data is being made available via the NHS iView tool which allows users to manipulate and extract data. To use NHS iView you will need to create an account.

In line with the Making Public Data Public initiative, the data is also being made available as a comma separated variable (CSV) file. The structure of the file is:

• Quarter
• PCT code
• PCT Name
• BNF section code
• BNF section name
• Items
• Actual Cost
• Net Ingredient Cost

Note that the file has column headings and that this is as extracted from ePACT (service provided by Prescription Services) and no changes have been made. It therefore differs from the iView product.