About this release

The National Therapeutic Indicators (NTIs) are a set of prescribing indicators that are used for quality improvement work. This publication by Public Health Scotland (PHS) is an update of prescribing data up to June 2022. The publication presents a visualisation of information by NHS Board, Health and Social Partnership, General Practitioner (GP) practice, GP cluster and practice peer group.

Main points

There are currently 28 prescribing indicators detailed in the publication. The example indicator below shows:

  • Scotland percentage of people in receipt of more than 12 short-acting beta-agonist (SABA) inhalers has reduced between July 2021 and June 2022 compared to previous years
  • NHS Western Isles had the highest proportion (9.92%) while NHS Orkney had the lowest (5.08%)

Poor Asthma Control: number of people prescribed more than 12 short-acting beta-agonist (SABA) inhalers per annum as a percentage of all people prescribed SABAs

Background

The data visualisation allows a more in-depth and interactive visual analysis of the current National Therapeutic Indicators paper publication, published by the Effective Prescribing and Therapeutics Division of the Scottish Government. The visualisation includes a presentation of variation and prescribing trends, and comparisons of Health and Social Care Partnerships, GP clusters and practice peer groups. This update also provides a practice level dashboard showing comparisons between indicators, health and social care partnership trends and an NHS board indicator summary.

This interactive visualisation allows the user to look at the variation in prescribing practice between GP practices and should be useful to both prescribers and associated prescribing staff who want an easy to access visualisation view of prescribing data.

This is the latest release of the data visualisation and further developments will follow, as prioritised by a steering group for this work which is commissioned by the Effective Prescribing and Therapeutics division of the Scottish Government. The update includes expanded detail for a number of indicators to help aid clinicians and prescribing advisers.

Further information

Further information is available from the Prescribing webpages.

The next release of this publication will be January 2023.

General enquiries

If you have an enquiry relating to this publication, please email phs.prescribing@phs.scot.

Media enquiries

If you have a media enquiry relating to this publication, please contact the Communications and Engagement team.

Requesting other formats and reporting issues

If you require publications or documents in other formats, please email phs.otherformats@phs.scot.

To report any issues with a publication, please email phs.generalpublications@phs.scot.

Older versions of this publication

Versions of this publication released before 16 March 2020 may be found on the Data and Intelligence, Health Protection Scotland or Improving Health websites.

Last updated: 21 March 2024
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