Provision of Prescribing Data Modelling

Tender description

Prescribing Data Modelling for Scottish Government Amidst current economic turbulence and rising inflation, prescribing costs within NHS Scotland continue to steadily increase and create cost pressures within Health Boards for both primary and secondary care prescribing. Prescribing expenditure is expected to increase to around 3 billion GBP – 20% of total spend – across primary and secondary care in 2023-24. A key lever to reduce prescribing spend is performing robust benchmarking. NHS Scotland has several systems which record prescribing data such as PRISMS, PIS, ScriptSwitch, Define, HEPMA and HMud but, whilst each system provides a slightly different perspective of prescribing activity, these systems are disjointed and used inconsistently across Health Boards. This is not an efficient approach; effective data usage is an important part of reducing spend but requires internal governance, process and structure to drive the generation of valuable intelligence to inform actions and next steps. Boards also vary on how finance teams are included within driving efficiency work across cost avoidance and cost savings. A proposal has been formed to improve this based on conversations with NHS Directors of Finance and Directors of Pharmacy. We will identify new opportunities to drive financial efficiencies by bringing together the range of prescribing data sources within NHS Scotland. This would in the longer term involve the creation of a digital tool which collates prescribing data in one place and helps draw financial and pharmaceutical insights.