From January 2025, the Secondary Care Medicines Data (SCMD) published data became accessible on ePACT2 for registered users. This will allow users to create analyses and reports in the ePACT2 interface eliminating the need to download separate data extracts from the NHSBSA Open Data Portal.
Users can access the data on ePACT2 by navigating to: create analysis > subject area > Secondary Care Meds Data.
Additionally, a user forum dedicated to SCMD in ePACT2 has been set up on FutureNHS.
The SCMD is a dataset published by the NHSBSA on behalf of NHS England. It contains processed pharmacy stock control data in a standardised format from all NHS Acute, Teaching, Specialist, Mental Health, and Community Trusts in England. This data is provided under an agreement between Trusts and Rx-info, facilitated by NHS England. The respective NHS Trusts are the data owners and controllers.
The SCMD includes monthly quantities of medicines issued by NHS Trust pharmacies and includes an indicative price metric. Data is standardised according to the Dictionary of Medicines and Devices (dm+d) which represents medicines and devices in use across the NHS.
The indicative cost of medicines supplied in this data is based on the community pharmacy reimbursement prices for generic medicines and list prices for branded medicines. This cost is calculated by multiplying the Virtual Medicinal Product (VMP) quantities issued by the relevant pricing data for the month. However, this indicative cost may differ significantly from the actual net cost, which includes discounts and rebates. Care should be taken when interpreting this data, as there may be significant discrepancies between indicative cost and actual cost.
Data is only available by VMP. There are no plans to publish data at Actual Medicinal Product (AMP) level, as this is outside the scope of the sharing agreement between Rx-Info, NHS England and the NHSBSA, which does not include the fields such as AMP, AMPP, qualified person, prescriber cost centre. Definitions about dm+d terminology can be found in the Data Model (ODT: 258KB).
A detailed data specification about the data is available in the Secondary Care Medicines Data Release Guidance (ODT: 84KB).
The NHSBSA publish this data on behalf of NHS England and does not provide analytical support or interpretation. For guidance on data interpretation and analysis, please refer to support and resources within the SCMD release guidance. For any advice on the ePACT2 functionality or to report a technical issue please contact DataServicesSupport@nhsbsa.nhs.uk