Primary Care Trust Prescribing Data - January to March 2012

This release contains data for the quarters April - June 2008 to January - March 2012.

Note that there have been changes to PCTs from 1st 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 Hertfordshire have 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 available via a tool called NHS iView which will allow users to manipulate and extract data. To use NHS iView you will need to create an account. To view the data and create an account follow the link above.

In line with the Making Public Data Public initiative, the data for January to March 2012 is also 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 NHS iView product.