Items which should not routinely be prescribed in primary care - travel vaccines

Below are the database queries which are used to create this measure. These are run against a copy of the BSA prescribing data which we store in Google BigQuery. We're working on making our BigQuery tables publicly available at which point it will be possible to run and modify these queries yourself. But even where code and database queries are not directly useable by others we believe it is always preferable to make them public.

Description Cost of travel vaccines per 1000 patients
Why it matters

NHS England guidance states:

The following vaccinations should not be prescribed on the NHS exclusively for the purposes of travel:

  • hepatitis B
  • Japanese encephalitis
  • meningitis ACWY
  • yellow fever
  • tick-borne encephalitis
  • rabies
  • BCG.

These vaccines should continue to be recommended for travel but the individual traveller will need to bear the cost of the vaccination.

For all other indications, as outlined in Immunisation Against Infectious Disease – the Green Book – the vaccine remains free on the NHS.

For guidance on when prescribing may be appropriate in some exceptional circumstances, please see the full NHS England guidance document.
Tags Cost Saving, NHS England - items which should not routinely be prescribed in primary care
Implies cost savings Yes
Authored by richard.croker
Checked by andrew.brown
Last reviewed 2024-03-05
Next review due 2026-03-05
History View change history on GitHub →

Numerator SQL

SELECT
     CAST(month AS DATE) AS month,
     practice AS practice_id,
     SUM(actual_cost) AS numerator
 FROM hscic.normalised_prescribing
 WHERE bnf_code IN ("1404000AAAAAAAA", "1404000AAAAABAB", "1404000AABDAAAB", "1404000AABDABAA", "1404000ARAAAAAA", "1404000ARBBAAAA", "1404000G0AAABAB", "1404000G0AAACAC", "1404000G0AAAEAE", "1404000G0AAAFAF", "1404000G0AAAGAG", "1404000G0AAAIAI", "1404000G0AAAJAJ", "1404000G0AAAKAK", "1404000G0BCAAAB", "1404000G0BCACAC", "1404000G0BCADAI", "1404000G0BEACAG", "1404000G0BEADAF", "1404000G0BEAEAE", "1404000G0BGAAAJ", "1404000G0BHAAAK", "1404000N0AAAAAA", "1404000N0AAABAB", "1404000N0AAADAD", "1404000N0AAAFAF", "1404000N0BDAAAB", "1404000N0BDABAF", "1404000N0BGAAAD", "1404000U0AAAAAA", "1404000U0BCAAAA", "1404000X0AAACAC", "1404000X0AAAGAG", "1404000X0BIAAAC", "1404000X0BJAAAG")
 GROUP BY month, practice_id

Denominator SQL

SELECT
     CAST(month AS DATE) AS month,
     practice AS practice_id,
     SUM(total_list_size / 1000.0) AS denominator
 FROM hscic.practice_statistics
 GROUP BY month, practice_id
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