Northern Ireland Prescription Dispensing and Payments

Prescriptions prescribed by General Practitioners and Nurses in Northern Ireland and subsequently dispensed by community pharmacists, dispensing doctors, and appliance suppliers. Data is submitted to the Business Services Organisation for payment and covers prescriptions that have been paid. The dataset is provided by OpenDataNI and was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyze prescription volume by contractor type (e.g., community pharmacist, dispensing doctor) to understand dispensing channel distribution.
• Study payment timelines and amounts submitted to the Business Services Organisation for financial auditing.
• Investigate geographic or temporal patterns in prescriptions prescribed by GPs versus Nurses within GP practices.

Strengths

• Covers the complete prescription lifecycle from prescription to paid claim, providing a closed-loop view.
• Data is sourced from the official Business Services Organisation, the payment authority for Northern Ireland health services.

Limitations

• Specific row counts, column details, and data volume are unknown, limiting assessment of statistical power.
• The temporal coverage and update frequency within the dataset are unspecified.

Provenance

Source

OpenDataNI, aggregating data from the Business Services Organisation (BSO).

Collection Method

Collected from paid prescription claims submitted by dispensing contractors (pharmacists, doctors, suppliers).

Freshness

Last updated in April 2026, indicating planned future updates.

Geography

Northern Ireland