Training & events
The Sax Institute provides training for policymakers, practitioners and researchers to build skills and knowledge that will enable the best use of research to support decision making.
Our regular training events
The Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) are valuable data resources with untapped potential to identify and monitor patterns of health service use and inform health service planning.
In this course participants will gain:
- An introduction to datasets
- Advice on dealing with some of their specific characteristics
- View worked examples of how datasets can be used.
Who should attend?
This course will be of interest to researchers, policymakers and health service/program planning teams new to working with MBS and PBS data. The course is designed for those planning to use the Sax Institute’s 45 and Up Study or similar for linked data research and those interested in driving policy and practice change.
Content
This course includes the following topics:
- Why analyse MBS and PBS data and different data cuts available
- What information is captured, and which people are included, in the datasets
- Common elements in MBS and PBS data
- What can and cannot be measured using MBS and PBS data
- Peculiarities of the datasets
- How to choose the right codes, people, and study periods
- General advice for analysing MBS and PBS data, analysing aggregate data
- A case study for analysing individual-level data from multiple datasets.
About the presenter
Dr Anna Kemp-Casey
Dr Anna Kemp-Casey is a Research Fellow in the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences at Adelaide University and an adjunct with The University of Western Australia and University of Wollongong.
Anna has two decades of experience using PBS and MBS data. Her research primarily focuses on medicines utilisation, medicines policy, and the analysis of prescription and linked health data. She has extensive experience examining health service use in vulnerable populations, assessing cost barriers to medication access, analysing policy impacts, conducting pharmacovigilance and medicine safety studies, and performing health outcomes research using linked state and national datasets.
Anna is a former member of the Drug Utilisation Subcommittee of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee.
Contact us
If you have any questions about Sax Institute training events, contact us at training@saxinstitute.org.au.