General Medical Subsidy Collection
The General Medical Subsidies Collection contains data on the fee-for-service payments made to doctors for patient visits.
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The General Medical Subsidies Collection contains data on the fee-for-service payments made to doctors for patient visits. It is used to monitor contracts with providers, to support the forecasting and setting of budgets and to enable the analysis of health needs.
Originally, almost all patient visits to general practitioners would have resulted in a fee-for-service GMS claim. However since 2003, capitation payments made via Primary Health Organisations (PHOs) have progressively replaced fee-for-service claiming. Now GMS claims are made of only a limited number of patient visits of specific types.
The GMS collection is used by Ministry of Health analysts, DHBs and PHOs to monitor contracts with providers, to support the forecasting and setting of budgets and to enable the analysis of health needs.
For further information about this collection or to request specific datasets or reports email data-enquiries@health.govt.nz.
Scope
Start date
Start date
The GMS Datamart was established in August 2003 and contains data from November 2001.
Guide for use
Guide for use
All data transferred from Sector Operations to the GMS Datamart is claim-related data sent by claimants. Definitions in the GMS Datamart Data Dictionary are based on the GP Section 88 Notice.
The GMS Datamart includes only health events processed by Sector Operations. Since the introduction of PHOs, capitation payments have reduced the number of fee-for-service claims considerably. As a result of this, most health events are not included in the GMS Datamart.
For further details refer to the General Medical Subsidy Data Mart Data Dictionary.
Using the collection
Start date
Start date
The GMS Datamart was established in August 2003 and contains data from November 2001.
Guide for use
Guide for use
All data transferred from Sector Operations to the GMS Datamart is claim-related data sent by claimants. Definitions in the GMS Datamart Data Dictionary are based on the GP Section 88 Notice.
The GMS Datamart includes only health events processed by Sector Operations. Since the introduction of PHOs, capitation payments have reduced the number of fee-for-service claims considerably. As a result of this, most health events are not included in the GMS Datamart.
For further details refer to the General Medical Subsidy Data Mart Data Dictionary.
Collection methods – guide for providers
Collection methods – guide for providers
All transactional data is sourced from Sector Operations Proclaim system. It is loaded into the GMS Datamart via an intermediate data store (the IDS).
Frequency of updates
Frequency of updates
The GMS Datamart receives monthly extracts from Sector Operations via the IDS.
Security of data
Security of data
The GMS Datamart is accessed by authorised National Collections and Reporting staff for maintenance, data quality, audit and analytical purposes.
Authorised members of the Ministry of Health and DHBs have access to the data for analytical purposes, via the Business Objects reporting tool and the secure Health Information Network (HIN). Business Objects contains a subset of the data described in the Data Dictionary.
Please note, Business Objects is currently being decommissioned.
Privacy issues
Privacy issues
The Ministry of Health is required to ensure that the release of information recognises any legislation related to the privacy of health information, in particular the Official Information Act 1982, the Privacy Act 2020 and the Health Information Privacy Code 2020.
Information available to the general public is of a statistical and non-identifiable nature. Researchers requiring identifiable data will usually need approval from an Ethics Committee.
National reports and publications
National reports and publications
Sector Operations releases monthly reports to the DHBs on the HIN in MS Excel format.
Data provision
Data provision
Customised datasets or summary reports are available on request, either electronically or on paper. Staff from the Analytical Services team can help to define the specifications for a request and are familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the data.
The Analytical Services team also offers a peer review service to ensure that GMS data is reported appropriately when published by other organisations.
There may be charges associated with data extracts