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PBS and RPBS Section 85 Date of Supply Data

Page last updated: 16 April 2024

These reports contain summarised information on the number of prescriptions, total cost, government and patient contributions to total cost, and the derived pharmacy mark-up for PBS and RPBS Section 85 prescriptions supplied in Australia. From 1 January 2016, the data also includes the net amount paid by the patient.

Totals for each of these quantities are provided by PBS item code, patient category, and month. Reports by both date of supply and date of processing are provided. However, date of processing data is not being updated after January 2018 due to changes in the underlying data supplied by Services Australia. Please see the explanatory notes for details on the differences between the date of supply and the date of processing reports, and for more information on the reason for the discontinuation of the date of processing report.

The date of supply report is updated each month, once new data is available. The supplementary report is updated each quarter. The date of processing report is no longer being updated with new data.

This information is provided by the Department of Health and Aged Care to facilitate health policy research and analysis. Published work which reproduces this data in whole or part, including in aggregated form, should cite the Department of Health and Aged Care as the source. An appropriate citation is:

Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme Section 85 Supply Data, Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, www.pbs.gov.au

An appropriate citation for derivative works is:

Analysis based on Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme Section 85 Supply Data, Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, www.pbs.gov.au

Changes from March 2018 affecting the comparability of date of supply data

From March 2018 the PBS and RPBS date of supply data supplied by Services Australia (previously called DHS) to the Department of Health and Aged Care (the Department) contains prescription data not previously available.  Before March 2018 Services Australia provided data to the Department only where a prescription was fully processed by Services Australia. This excluded prescriptions that had been dispensed but had not yet been fully processed, as the expectation was that once a prescription was fully processed it would become available to the Department for reporting. From March 2018, Services Australia are providing information to the Department on all prescriptions that are dispensed under the PBS and RPBS the day after they are dispensed, irrespective of whether they have been fully processed. This was done to give the Department visibility of dispensed prescriptions in a timelier manner. However, this change in reporting has resulted in a slight increase (approximately 1.5%) in the number of prescriptions reported.  When looking at date of supply data in a time series this should be taken into account.

Disclaimer

While due care was taken in producing these reports, the Department provides no guarantee regarding the accuracy or fitness for purpose of the data and accepts no responsibility for analysis undertaken by users. Users are expected to perform their own due diligence to ensure that they are correctly interpreting the data.

The Department of Health and Aged Care does not necessarily endorse any particular use of this data, or any conclusions drawn from such use.

Downloadable Files

The Date of Supply report includes data on under co-payment prescriptions.  For details see the Explanatory Notes and Important Information below.

Date of Supply Report

This report is updated monthly.

Date of Supply Supplementary Report

This report is updated quarterly. This report includes the additional fields of drug type and approval type of dispensing pharmacy for the current financial year to date.

Historical Supplementary Reports

Historical Date of Supply Supplementary Reports remain available here below with no further updates applied. The figures are current at the date specified and, therefore, do not match the DOS report which includes new claims and adjustments by pharmacies processed after that date.

Item Code to Drug Mapping File

This file provides generic drug names associated with each item code in the reports.

Explanatory Notes

New users of these datasets should first download and read the explanatory notes. These include definitions of the fields in each report, as well as information to assist in correctly interpreting the data.

Important Information

  • Historical date of supply data is updated each month as more claims from previous periods are processed. As such, numbers in this report are never final. Recent months will be less complete than older months. For this reason, this report should not be used to analyse the recent trends.
  • Pharmacy mark-up is a theoretical amount calculated using the formula specified in the Community Pharmacy Agreement. This is not equal to the pharmacy’s retail margin, which includes various fees, and also depends on the actual price charged to pharmacies by suppliers (which can be lower than the approved ex-manufacturer price).
  • These reports exclude supplies under Section 100 special arrangements (such as Highly Specialised Drugs and Efficient Funding of Chemotherapy programs).
  • From 1 July 2012 the data includes PBS/RPBS under co-payment data.

Date of Processing Report (discontinued – data not updated from January 2018)

This report is discontinued – data not updated from January 2018.

 

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