Health Datasets/Australian Medical Benefits Scheme (MBS) and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS)

Description

This health care administration dataset contains line data (i.e. not aggregate) 10% of patients that have used the Medical Benefits Scheme (MBS) or the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) between the years of 1984-2014.

These schemes are at the core of Australia's universal healthcare system (i.e. Medicare) and are primarily administrative in nature. The MBS data is generated by financial reimbursement claims from General Practitioners, Specialists, Allied Health, Hospitals and other health services and the PBS data from pharmacies and other health services. The Australian Government Department of Health is the data custodian for both of the original datasets.

More information about this dataset can be found at http://data.gov.au/dataset/a8e3c0bc-44ac-4e9a-8b3c-b779438ddb10

Source

This dataset was originally found at http://data.gov.au/dataset/a8e3c0bc-44ac-4e9a-8b3c-b779438ddb10 in July 2016, but was pulled for maintenance in September 2016. Dennis Wollersheim imported the dataset, along with related reference tables, into an database, and subsequently setup this resource to document it. Contact him via email or via his talk page for more information.

Structure

Tools

• Useful SQL Queries

Database details

Area	Table Name	Number of Records	Description
	btos	16	Broad Type of Service
	cat_group	93
	mbs	765,031,264	Main Medical Benefits System (MBS) table
	mbs_cat	9	Lookup table for MBS categories
	mbs_desc	16438
	mbs_desc_latest	12474	Lookup table for MBS item descriptions
	mbs_group	94	Lookup table for MBS groups
	mbs_imap	12474
	mbs_reuse_imap	63
	mbs_subgroup	252	Lookup table for MBS subgroups
	patient	2,985,511	Patients
	pbs	229,007,463	Main Pharmaceutical Benefits System (PBS) table
	pbs_atc	6692	Lookup table for PBS item ATC's
	pbs_item	7614	Lookup table for PBS items
	pbs_item_manufacturer	15837
	spr_rsp	261	Lookup table for PBS service providers?
	drg_typ_cd	23	Lookup table for PBS drug types
	mjr_spclty_grp_cd	4	Lookup table for PBS Specialty group of prescriber
	ptnt_ctgry_drvd_cd	9	Lookup table for PBS Patient category
	undr_cprscrptn_typ_cd	4	Lookup table for PBS claim level

Individual Table Details

There are 3 major tables: PBS, MBS and Patients. PBS is drug prescription data, MBS is medical procedure data, and Patient holds the data about individual patients.

PBS Table

Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Field Name	Data	Description
PK	Serial	Primary Key
pin	character varying(11)	Patient ID
supply_date	date	Date of Supply
pbs_item	character varying(6)	Item code for prescribed
pbs_rgltn24_adjst_qty	integer	Quantity of PBS item supplied; regulation 24 adjusted. For some items, pbs_rgltn24_adjst_qty = 1 indicates the entire packet/box/bottle is supplied.
bnft_amt	double precision	Benefit/Amount paid by the commonwealth government in AUD
ptnt_cntrbtn_amt	double precision	Contribution/Amount paid by the consumer in AUD
srt_rpt_ind	character varying(4)	Repeat ("R") or Original (blank) script identifier
rgltn24_ind	boolean	Regulation 24 indicator - whether a script and all repeats can be filled all at once
drg_typ_cd	character varying(2)	Drug type (codeset); a classification of drug type
mjr_spclty_grp_cd	character varying(4)	Specialty group of prescriber (codeset); classification of prescribers
undr_cprscrptn_typ_cd	character varying(32)	PBS claim level (codeset); a classification of co-payment claims
prscrptn_cnt	integer	Number of prescriptions supplied. This is a derived/calculated item for this dataset, no METeOR reference available.
ptnt_ctgry_drvd_cd	character varying(2)	Patient category (codeset); a classification of patient's government assistance scheme
ptnt_state	character varying(3)	Geographic location of patient, state

MBS Table

Medical Benefits Scheme.

Field Name	Data	Description
PK	Serial	Primary key
pin	character(11)	Patient ID
service_date	date	Date of service, supplied/performed
pinstate	character(1)	Patient geographic location, state
spr*	character(9)	Service/care provider identifier (*encrypted)
spr_rsp	character(4)
sprprac	character(1)	Service/care provider practice location identifier
sprstate	character(1)	Service/care provider geographic location, state
rpr*	character varying(9)	Referring provider identifier (*encrypted)
rprprac	character(1)	Referring provider practice location identifier
rprstate	character(1)	Referring provider geographic location, state
item	character(5)	MBS item identifier
numserv	integer	Number of MBS services claimed
mdv_numserv	smallint	Number of MBS services claimed, where bulk billing incentive and modifier items are counted
benpaid	money	Benefit/Amount paid by the commonwealth government in AUD
feecharged	real	Fee/Amount charged by the service/care provider
schedfee	real	Scheduled fee/Amount set by the commonwealth government to be paid for the MBS item in AUD
billtypecd	character(1)	Billing-type code: D = direct/bulk billed, P = patient billed
inhospital	character(1)	Indicator of whether the service was provided within a hospital
sample_weight	real

Patient Table

Patient details.

Field Name	Data	Description
pin	character varying(11)	Patient ID
yob	integer	Patient's year of birth (YYYY)
sex	character varying(4)	Patient's sex (N)

Derived data extracts

Due to dataset size, there are several subsets useful for testing queries. Note, the id column is not the same between tables.

Subset suffix	Description
*_l	eg patient_l, pbs_l and mbs_l, holding only the patients with greater than 1200 PBS events, along with their matching pbs, mbs and patient details.
*_r	a random 1% sample from patient table, along with matching PBS and MBS records.
*_rr	a random 0.1% sample from patient table, along with matching PBS and MBS records.