Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS)

Data Collection Type
National data collections of health and social care in Ireland
Organisation

Health Service Executive- National Health
Schemes Data.

Year established

1970 (data collection),
1993 (first records visible online).

Statement of purpose

To support the delivery of primary
healthcare by providing reimbursement
services to primary care contractors for the provision of health services to members of the public in their own community.

Coverage (geographical and temporal)

The data covers the main national health schemes throughout the entire country.

1970- Present.

Description/Summary

The HSE supports the delivery
of primary healthcare by operating contracts with primary care contractors for the provision of health services to members of the public in their own community.

Data users

Government, HSE, CSO, business interests, researchers, media, public.

Data content

The data contains information on the number of people in use of the services; details of health services provided and medicine products prescribed and dispensed.

Data dictionary

Not available.

National-level identifier variables

Patient identifiers are collected to record eligibility which include PPSN.

Equity stratifiers

Place of residence and gender are captured for medical card holders. Where means test apply, income is also captured.

Data collection methodology

Claim data is processed and payments are made by the Primary Care Reimbursement Service under the following Schemes/Payment Arrangements:

- General Medical Services (GMS)
- Drugs Payment Scheme (DPS)
- Long Term Illness Scheme (LTI)
- Dental Treatment Services Scheme (DTSS)
- European Economic Area (EEA)
- High Tech Drugs (HTD)
- Primary Childhood Immunisation Scheme
- Health (Amendment) Act 1996
- Methadone Treatment Scheme
- Health Service Executive Community Ophthalmic Services Scheme (HSE-COS)
- Immunisations for certain GMS Eligible Persons
- General Practitioner Visit Card (GPVC)

Data is collected via both electronic and manual data capture approaches. Data is captured record by record in real time as its generated and also in batches from various parts of the health system, e.g. HSE offices and Pharmacies etc.

Clinical coding scheme

N/A.

Size of national collection

In 2021, PCRS carried out between 80 and 90 million business transactions which corresponded to reimbursement for items of service. There are 12 community health schemes and the PCRS data model including core and supporting data structures comprises approximately 1,400 entities.

Publication frequency

Data is published annually in the PCRS statistical analysis report, available on the website, with monthly updates available on the Publications page. The CSO also publish summary data on their website.

Accessing data

Access via https://www.hse.ie/eng/staff/pcrs/pcrs-publications/

Open data portal access

Yes.

Telephone contact
Other comments

Primary Care Contractors are the primary source of data within PCRS via their claims.