Challenge
Those living over 1.6km away from a pharmacy, or with other approved exceptional circumstances, have the option to collect prescriptions from their GP surgery (if dispensing).
NHS South, Central and West (NHS SCW) have helped the Care Boards for the South East Pharmacy Optometry and Dentistry Commissioning, reviewing dispensing patient lists through geospatial analysis.
The South East Commissioning Hub team and the NHS SCW needed to establish patient eligibility, requiring data covering both patient and pharmacy locations. As directed by the NHS England Pharmacy Manual, there is an annual requirement for commissioning organisations to validate their dispensing patient lists, to make sure that only eligible patients are retained on dispensing lists and that GPs are receiving appropriate funding.
Solution
To carry out their distance-based analysis, and to create easy-to-read building-level mapping, NHS SCW used:
- pharmacy data from the commissioning hub team
- dispensing patient and address data from the NHS Personal Demographic Service
- OS AddressBase data and Code-Point
NHS SCW also developed an online mapping application so users can visualise the data used in the validation process. This harnesses the OS Delivery Point Address (DPA) geolocator, to support users searching for address locations.
The teams were able to access OS data for free under the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA).
Result
As a result, stakeholders have a definitive list of patients eligible for GP dispensing and therefore can accurately calculate where funding is required.
Learn more about the role of geospatial in NHS healthcare
"The work that NHS SCW CSU carried out meant that the dispensing patient list in the South East has reduced by 20,721 patients, ensuring the right people are still on the Dispensing List and reducing the cost to the NHS."