BENCHMARK REPORTS FOR ‘SPECIALS’ IN DEFINE
Posted in News
Drugs that are ‘Specials’ accounted for more than £38million spend in the last 12 months and are equivalent of between 0.56% and 5.8% of Trusts’ total spend.
To help you see what your Trust’s spend is a new node has been created on the Benchmark home screen under ‘Usage’. This uses the Dictionary of Medicines and Devices availability flags to support four new reports for
- Specials spend by Trust
- Specials percentage of total Trust spend
- Specials percentage of total Trust spend by chemical
- Spend by Trust on imported drugs
These reports allow users to compare the amount spent on Specials and Imported products with that of other Trusts and also to identify products incurring the greatest cost.
There are also two new reports under the ‘Spend’ node which are for the total amount spent on special-order drugs in the last 12 months, and the percentage of the total drug cost that is incurred by ‘Specials’.
We have also added a new drug filter for “dm+d availability” which can be used to overlay Benchmark reports, or for Custom reporting. Using this filter allows you to include, or exclude, drugs defined as Imported and Special.
Drugs not included in the dm+d reference will not be seen on the reports. Rx-info is working closely with the dm+d team to increase secondary care coverage, particularly for Specials and licenced and Imported products.
For those of you who are very interested, the dm+d editorial policy is available to download here where the section “Restrictions on availability” on Page 37 explains these product categories and others in more detail.