Just before Christmas we had a paper published in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. It looked at how GP practices responded to changes to the guidance for antibiotics for urinary tract infections (UTIs). It’s an interesting story in itself, but we think that it prompts some wider questions about how GPs are helped to keep […]
Communicating variation in prescribing – Why We Use Deciles
On OpenPrescribing.net we provide data for individual practices and CCGs (and now STPs and regions!) making it easier for everyone to explore NHS prescribing patterns in England – supporting safer, more efficient prescribing. However, providing data for an individual location in isolation is rarely useful. We need to provide context, so that some sort of […]
Openness and Transparency: why is openness and transparency important for good data analysis and how does OpenPrescribing embody it?
We think it is unhelpful that so much NHS data analysis is outsourced, or done behind closed doors. This blog sets out the steps we take with OpenPrescribing.net to ensure all our analysis and methodology is freely available for inspection, review, and importantly re-use, by anyone.
NHS price concessions cost charities and local authorities an additional £5.6 million last year
Here, we report our estimate of the impact on non-CCG organisations (such as charities and local authorities) as an additional £5.6 million in 2018: a huge four-fold cost increase on top of expected prices for a sector that is already over-stretched.
NHS Regional and STP Dashboards – A new Feature on OpenPrescribing
Today we launched NHS regional and STP dashboards on OpenPrescribing.net, which allow anyone to see NHS prescribing patterns across areas larger than CCGs. You can find these new dashboards under “Area and Practice Dashboards”. What is an NHS STP or Region? The NHS across England is now organised into Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs) and […]
Building new prescribing measures – we need your help
At OpenPrescribing we have a range of prescribing measures that makes it easier for everyone to explore NHS prescribing patterns in England – supporting safer, more efficient prescribing. We now have 70 measures including our two latest on Freestyle Libre and herbal medicines, that we recently blogged about. The measures are available for for every […]