Pharmaceutical collection

The collection started in 1 July 1992.

Records from before 1996 have been archived, but are available on request.

The pharmaceutical collection has gone through 2 major changes since 1992.

• Repeat prescriptions were introduced in 1996.
• The major drug key changed from Medicode, allocated by Sector Services, to Pharmacode (pharmacy stock code) in 1998.

Other small structural changes are made to the collection each year.

All money values are assumed to include GST, unless otherwise stated.

Identification of co-prescribing, which is the analysis of drugs being prescribed and taken together, has been a problem with historical data.

The main source of the data is Sector Operations’ GTPS. Extra data is provided by:

• Stats NZ geographical and census data — claimant data is geocoded by the national collections and reporting geocoding engine
• Sector Operations — provider reference data
• Pharmac — the Pharmac Schedule and mappings.

Health NZ gets monthly extracts from Sector Operations and Pharmac.

The collection is accessed by authorised Health NZ and Pharmac staff for the purposes of:

• maintenance
• data quality
• audit
• analytics.

Authorised members of the Ministry of Health and Health NZ have access to the collection for analytical purposes, using Business Objects and the secure Health Information Network. Business Objects contains a subset of the data described in the Data Dictionary.

Access to the collection requires approval from Health NZ.

Business Objects is being decommissioned.

We are required to make sure that the release of information meets the conditions of any legislation related to the privacy of health information. In particular the:

• Official Information Act 1982
• Privacy Act 2020
• Health Information Privacy Code 2020.

Information available to the general public is of a statistical and non-identifiable nature. A data release policy covers approval where appropriate from a health ethics committee.

We are responsible for the privacy of NHI-related information. NHIs were provided for approximately 97% of dispensings in 2010.

Summarised pharmaceutical data can be accessed using the Pharmaceutical data web tool and in Pharmac's annual reports.

Pharmaceutical data web tool

Annual reports — Pharmacexternal link

Customised datasets or summary reports are available on request. These can be electronic or on paper.

Our team can help to define the specifications for a request and are familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the data.

We also offer a peer review service to make sure Health NZ data is reported appropriately when published by other organisations.

There may be charges associated with data extracts.