Health Insurance prescriptions (FOI)

Request

Could I please request for details of the number of Health Insurance prescriptions prescribed and dispensed within Jersey by month.

An example, this data is provided on a monthly basis by the Northern Ireland Open Data Team for prescription in Northern Ireland at:

Dispensing by Contractor - Dispensed Items by GP and Pharmacy, April 2021 - (Open Data NI.gov.uk)

Could the data please include the same columns as are on that link: for each month, details of each GP surgery and community pharmacy in Jersey and how many prescriptions have been dispensed by that pharmacy from that GP surgery. If this is possible, then can this data be made available for the past 12 months or for as many months for which the data is available.

Response

The data provided dates from January 2014, which is the earliest data point held.

Health Insurance prescriptions list (excel)

The data is presented by general practice. The number of prescriptions issued by single-handed practitioners has been merged with other services including Dentists, vulnerable adults service and non-medical prescribers. This is in order to protect the personal data of those practitioners. In this respect Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

The data has not been presented by pharmacy as this is deemed commercially sensitive information. Article 33(b) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Articles applied

Article 25 - Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

Article 33 - Commercial interests

Information is qualified exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes a trade secret; or

(b) its disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of a person (including the scheduled public authority holding the information).

Public Interest Test

Article 33 (b) is a prejudice-based exemption. That means that in order to engage this exemption there must be a likelihood that disclosure would cause prejudice to the interest that the exemption protects. In addition, this is a qualified exemption and consideration must be given to the public interest in maintaining the exemption. 

The Scheduled Public Authority (SPA) accepts that whilst the public may have an interest in the number of prescriptions dispensed by each pharmacy, it was considered that this was outweighed as due to the high proportion of single handed and fully independent pharmacies, the exact prescription volumes would allow an estimation of their income to be made by their competitors.