OpenPrescribing Newsletter September 2019

New Feature! Measures linked to Analyse page

Following many requests from users, we have created links from our measures to the corresponding search on the Analyse page. This is particularly useful if you want to see multiple practices or CCGs on one chart, view the results on a map, or see exactly which products are included in the measure.

You will notice this is not yet available for all of our measures (which now number close to 100), due to the complex way some measures are constructed. This currently affects just 12 of our standard measures and 4 of the Low-Priority prescribing measures, and we hope to keep increasing the options in the coming months.

More Improvements to PPU Tool

Our “price-per-unit” (PPU) tool helps identify the cheapest presentation for a given drug or treatment. In the last newsletter we told you that we had reduced the minimum threshold for savings to be included on our PPU savings tool: from £50 per month for a practice and £1000 for a CCG; to £10 and £200 respectively.

Now, you may also notice a small increase in each of the available savings shown. When estimating the savings available through switching, we had previously underestimated by around 5% because of the way we were making comparisons between organisations. This has now been amended. Note, the pricing information for individual presentations (as displayed in our bubble charts), wasn’t affected by this.

If you’re interested in the details, read more in our source code here.

Explore PPU savings for your practice or CCG by clicking “Savings on individual presentations” on your dashboard page.

PCN Dashboards — coming soon

We get lots of requests to show PCN groupings on the website. We’ve done some preparatory work behind the scenes but we cannot complete these dashboards without a list of PCN membership for England. We are hoping this will be released soon. Read more in our blog — and see how you can help on our PCN holding page.

As you know, we are now building OpenPathology.net modelled on OpenPrescribing: this will help everyone understand variation in use of blood tests across the NHS. We have lots of interesting things to tell you about so we’re launching a new newsletter!

To opt in

click here to register!
or, if you already subscribe to the present newsletter, use the link at the bottom of your last email to update your preferences then check the “OpenPathology.net” box.

In case you missed it…

All the best bits from the previous newsletter

New Feature! DM+D browser: We launched a new browser for the NHS Dictionary of Medicines and Devices (dm+d). Read more about the dm+d in [this detailed blog]/blog/2019/08/what-is-the-dm-d-the-nhs-dictionary-of-medicines-and-devices/). Read more about the tool here. Please tell us what improvements you would like to see and what interesting things you are using it for.
New! All England email alerts Our innovative custom email alerts for prescribing measures (also for price concessions, and custom analyses) tell you as soon as your prescribing starts to change in comparison to peers: this allows you to respond quickly. Prompted by user feedback, we have now developed this service for the national picture. To sign up, just go to the All England page and enter your email address in the box beside the measures categories, or read more in our blog. Get in touch to tell us your feedback!
New and Extended Price Concessions Dashboards: We have now added price concessions dashboards to our STP and regional dashboards (STP example; regional team example) so you can monitor the cost impact of products with “no cheaper stock obtainable” across these wider geographies. And, on all of our price concession dashboards for all organisations, the data now covers a longer period, 30 months (All-England example).

Prescribing data update!

We’ve updated OpenPrescribing with July’s data. Head over to openprescribing.net to explore.

In other news…

You can come and see us talk about our COMPare project at a Pint of Science event alongside OpenPharma.

The event is being held during Open Access week and will be at St. Aldates Tavern, Oxford, Wednesday 23 October, 7.00—9.30 pm.

Get all this information direct to your inbox, monthly: Sign up here.