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Prototype Prescribing Outlier Dashboard for St Richards Road Surgery

At OpenPrescribing we are piloting a number of data-driven approaches to identify unusual prescribing and collect feedback on this prescribing to inform development of new tools to support prescribers and organisations to audit and review prescribing. These pilot results are provided for the interest of advanced users, although we don't know how relevant they are in practice. There is substantial variation in prescribing behaviours, across various different areas of medicine. Some variation can be explained by demographic changes, or local policies or guidelines, but much of the remaining variation is less easy to explain.

The DataLab is keen to hear your feedback on the results. You can do this by completing the following survey or emailing us at [email protected]. Please DO NOT INCLUDE IDENTIFIABLE PATIENT information in your feedback. All feedback is helpful, you can send short or detailed feedback.

This report has been developed to automatically identify prescribing patterns at a chemical level which are furthest away from “typical prescribing” and can be classified as an “outlier”. We calculate the number of prescriptions for each chemical in the BNF coding system, the count of all prescriptions within that chemical's BNF subparagraph, for prescriptions dispensed between June 2021 and December 2021. We then calculate the ratio of these counts along with the mean and standard deviation of those ratios across all Practices. From this we can calculate the “z-score”, which is a measure of how many standard deviations a given Practice is from the population mean. We then rank your “z-scores” to find the top 10 results where prescribing is an outlier for prescribing higher than its peers and those where it is an outlier for prescribing lower than its peers.

For each outlier chemical, a kernel density estimation plot of all Practice's chemical:subparagraph ratios is provided, with this Practice's ratio overlaid in red.

It is important to remember that this information was generated automatically and it is therefore likely that some of the behaviour is warranted. This report seeks only to collect information about where this variation may be warranted and where it might not, to inform research on this topic. Our full analytical method code is openly available on GitHub here.

This is a new, experimental feature. We'd love to .

Prescribing where St Richards Road Surgery is higher than most

BNF Chemical Chemical Items BNF Subparagraph Subparagraph Items Ratio Mean std Z_Score Plots
Oxazepam 107 Anxiolytics 582 0.18 0.01 0.02 7.49
Salicylic acid 4 Preparations for psoriasis 87 0.05 0.00 0.01 5.20
Low protein cakes 9 Foods for special diets 323 0.03 0.00 0.01 4.81
Phenobarbital sodium 1 Control of epilepsy 4,077 0.00 0.00 0.00 4.68
Low protein meals 13 Foods for special diets 323 0.04 0.00 0.01 4.50
Ciprofloxain/dexameth 38 Otitis externa 122 0.31 0.05 0.06 4.00
Benzalkonium chloride 15 Shampoos and some other scalp preparations 71 0.21 0.04 0.05 3.26
Perindopril erbumine 1,579 Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors 3,948 0.40 0.09 0.10 3.19
Nabilone 1 Drugs used in nausea and vertigo 702 0.00 0.00 0.00 3.16
Levomepromazine hydrochloride 48 Antipsychotic drugs 799 0.06 0.01 0.02 3.13

Prescribing where St Richards Road Surgery is lower than most

BNF Chemical Chemical Items BNF Subparagraph Subparagraph Items Ratio Mean std Z_Score Plots
Amlodipine 2,317 Calcium-channel blockers 4,451 0.52 0.76 0.11 -2.09
Other emollient preparations 275 Emollients 365 0.75 0.89 0.07 -2.00
Quinine sulfate 88 Antimalarials 141 0.62 0.90 0.14 -2.00
Salicylic acid 1 Preparations for warts and calluses 5 0.20 0.67 0.31 -1.52
Prednisolone 5 Copound haemorrhoidal preparations with corticosteroid 70 0.07 0.43 0.24 -1.50
Ganciclovir 0 Antivirals 1 0.00 0.63 0.43 -1.46
    Aspirin 1,608 Antiplatelet drugs 2,856 0.56 0.65 0.06 -1.43
    Memantine hydrochloride 23 Drugs for dementia 182 0.13 0.38 0.18 -1.42
    Empagliflozin 8 Other antidiabetic drugs 1,040 0.01 0.15 0.10 -1.39
    Permethrin 1 Parasiticidal preparations 2 0.50 0.83 0.24 -1.38