Low income scheme index: a new deprivation scale based on prescribing in general practice

Abstract

The new index provides a good measure of deprivation at family health services authority level, and at practice level the results are sufficiently encouraging to warrant further research. It provides the best available instrument for relating deprivation to the use of drugs in any population that can be defined by prescribing data, but an attempt to use it in determining allocation of resources would at this stage be premature.