Primary Care Trust Prescribing Data from January to March - 2011

This release adds data for January to March 2011. PCT Prescribing already contains data for the quarters April - June 2008, July - September 2008, October - December 2008, January - March 2009, April - June 2009, July to September 2009, October to December 2009, January to March 2010, April to June 2010 and October to December 2010. 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 (often reflecting a change to Care Trust status). In such cases the earlier name will be retained for consistency. The PCTs East and North Hertfordshire and West Hertfordshirehave merged to form Hertfordshire. 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.