Respiratory prescribing accounts for a significant amount of prescribing spend in the NHS. It is known that a large proportion of hospital admissions and A&E attendances are as a result of asthma or COPD exacerbations. In many cases, these admissions and attendances may be avoided by managing patients appropriately in the community and ensuring that their inhaled medicines are prescribed and used optimally.
Given the complexity of prescribing in respiratory care and the plethora of medicines available, it was agreed by a national group of respiratory specialists that it would be useful to help see the variation in prescribing of respiratory medicines across England.
The aim of this dashboard is to highlight the variation in prescribing across the SICBLs in England so that SICBLs and local health economies can utilise this data at local level to decide if this variation is warranted or unwarranted and if and how they may wish to address this.
Whilst this may demonstrate patterns in prescribing and spend on those medicines, we do not anticipate that local health economies will use this dashboard in isolation. Its intention is to help generate discussion about respiratory prescribing within local health economies, that may potentially help inform any future programmes of work or help to identify areas for future improvement in prescribing. Indeed, it may also help to identify best practice that others can learn from.
View the specification (Word: 112 KB) and Appendix 2 (Excel: 106KB)
Read the Respiratory Dashboard supportive guidance (PDF: 256 KB).
Read the getting the best out of the Respiratory Prescribing Dashboard (PDF: 128KB).
If you're registered, you can access the Respiratory Dashboard via ePACT2.
If you are not registered for ePACT2, you can access the Respiratory dashboard using the Catalyst - public insight portal