Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS)
HSE, National Health Schemes Data
1970 — data collection established.
1993 — first records visible online.
To support the delivery of primary healthcare by providing a reimbursement service to primary care contractors for the provision of health services to members of the public in their own community.
The data covers the main national health schemes throughout the entire country.
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.
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.
General practitioners (GPs), community pharmacies, dentists and optometrists/ophthalmologists, HSE — Regions.
Claim data is processed and payments are made by the Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS) 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 it is generated and also in batches from various parts of the health system, e.g. HSE offices and Pharmacies etc..
Not available
N/A
In 2016, PCRS carried out between 70 and 80 million business transactions which corresponded to items of service reimbursed. There are 12 community health schemes and the PCRS data model including core and supporting data structures comprises approximately 1,400 entities. The count of rows added in 2016 ranges up to 60 million per entity. The total number of additional data rows added across the data model is not available.
Data is published annually in the PCRS report, available on the HSE website, with more regular updates to be published in 2017. Data is also published in the Key Trends report and the Health Statistics reports issued by the Information Unit. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) also publishes summary data on its website.
The PCRS compiles statistics and trend analyses which are provided to other areas within the HSE, the Government, customers, stakeholders and to members of the public. Portions of data are made visible to registered users, e.g. GPs. The data is transactional in nature.
No
Primary care contractors are the primary source of data within PCRS via their claims.