NZHIS National Collections

NEW ZEALAND HEALTH INFORMATION SERVICE

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Guide to NZHIS National Collections:
Pharmaceutical Collection (Pharms)

Scope

Purpose
The Pharmaceutical Collection is a data warehouse that supports the management of pharmaceutical subsidies. It is jointly owned by the Ministry of Health and Pharmac.

Content
The Pharmceutical Collection contains claim and payment information from pharmacists for subsidised dispensings that have been processed by the HealthPAC General Transaction Processing System (GTPS).
As at October 2002, the Pharmceutical Collection holds over 270 million claims. Approximately 3.5 million rows of data are added each month.

Start date

The collection was started in 1 July 1992. Records from before 1996 have been archived, but can be made available on request.

Guide for use

The Pharmceutical Collection has undergone two major changes since 1992:

repeat prescriptions were introduced in 1996, and
the major drug key changed from Medicode (allocated by HealthPAC) to Pharmacode (pharmacy stock code) in 1998.

Other small structural changes are made to the Pharmceutical Collection each year. For more information, refer to the Pharmhouse Data Dictionary.
All money values are assumed to be inclusive of 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.

Contact information

For further information about this collection or to request specific datasets or reports, contact the NZHIS Analytical Services Team, on ph 04 816 2882, fax 04 816 2898, or e-mail inquiries@nzhis.govt.nz.

Collection methods – guide for providers

The main source of the data is HealthPAC’s GTPS. Additional data is provided by:

Statistics NZ (Geographical and Census data; claimant data is geocoded by the NZHIS geocoding engine)
HealthPAC (provider reference data)
Pharmac (the Pharmac Schedule and mappings).

Frequency of updates

NZHIS receives monthly extracts from HealthPAC and Pharmac.

Security of data

The Pharmceutical Collection is accessed by authorised NZHIS and Pharmac staff for maintenance, data quality, audit and analytical purposes.
Authorised members of the Ministry of Health and DHBs have access to the Pharmceutical Collection for analytical purposes, via Business Objects and the secure Health Information Network. Business Objects contains a subset of the data described in the Data Dictionary.
Access to the Pharmceutical Collection requires approval from Pharmac.

Privacy issues

The Ministry of Health is required to ensure that the release of information recognises any legislation related to the privacy of health information, in particular the Official Information Act 1982, the Privacy Act 1993 and the Health Information Privacy Code 1994.
Information available to the general public is of a statistical and non-identifiable nature. Researchers requiring identifiable data will usually need approval from an Ethics Committee.
NZHIS is responsible for the privacy of NHI-related information. NHI numbers have only been provided since April 2002, and only approximately one-third of dispensings have a valid NHI number.
Pharmac is responsible for the security of information relating to the practice of prescribing drugs.

National reports and publications

Pharmac releases monthly reports to the DHBs and Shared Support Agencies in MS Excel format.

Data provision

If approval is provided by Pharmac, customised datasets or summary reports are available on request, either electronically or on paper. Staff from the NZHIS Analytical Services team can help to define the specifications for a request and are familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the data.
The NZHIS Analytical Services team also offer a peer review service to ensure that NZHIS data is reported appropriately when published by other organisations.
There may be charges associated with data extracts.

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