Scope of analysis data set

The scope of the analysis dataset is ex-serving members with at least one day of service on or after 1 January 2001 (who were discharged after that time) who accessed the PBS/RPBS and received a dispensing of medication between 1 July 2017 and 30 June 2018.

Scoping of ex-serving population in the PMKeyS

The Department of Defence provided the AIHW with an extract from the PMKeyS containing 118,800 records of all ADF members who have had at least 1 day of service on or after 1 January 2001 and who were discharged after 1 January 2001.

This resulting augmented cohort with 154,052 records produced 121,969 links to the MEF, representing 118,540 linked PMKeyS cohort records, of a possible 118,880. Further duplicate processing yielded a person-level PMKeyS data set of 118,505 records. There, 704 records removed due to exclusionary criteria used in previous VHWU analysis. The final PMKeyS dataset had 117,801 ex-serving individuals with operational experience and one day of service since 2001.

Scoping of analysis population in the PBS

The raw PBS/RPBS dataset contained 8,789,463 rows and linked to the PMKeyS cohort with any records no longer linked deleted from the data. The termination date from all PMKeyS individuals was also linked to the PBS/RPBS. All records with a date of supply before the individual’s termination date were deleted from the data set. The final PBS/RPBS dataset contained 7,027,860 dispensing records from 101,695 distinct individuals.