Skip to main content
An official website of the United States government
Government Funding Lapse
Because of a lapse in government funding, the information on this website may not be up to date, transactions submitted via the website may not be processed, and the agency may not be able to respond to inquiries until appropriations are enacted.

The NIH Clinical Center (the research hospital of NIH) is open. For more details about its operating status, please visit cc.nih.gov.

Updates regarding government operating status and resumption of normal operations can be found at opm.gov.

NCPDP Terminology

The National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) creates and promotes the transfer of data related to medications, supplies, and services within the healthcare system through the development of standards and industry guidance. The terminology files support two of those standards:

  1. The NCPDP SCRIPT Standard supports messages regarding new prescriptions, prescription changes, refill requests, prescription fill status notification, prescription cancellation, medication history, and transactions for long term care environments.
  2. The NCPDP Telecommunication Standard supports the electronic communication of claims and other transactions between pharmacy providers, insurance carriers, third party administrators, and other responsible parties.

Starting with SCRIPT version 10.5 and Telecommunication Standard version D.3, NCPDP adopted terminology sets from NCI Thesaurus, aligning with FDA Structured Product Labeling and the Federal Medications Terminologies standards.

You can download NCPDP terminology files from the NCI File Transfer Protocol (FTP) site.

  • Updated:

If you would like to reproduce some or all of this content, see Reuse of NCI Information for guidance about copyright and permissions. In the case of permitted digital reproduction, please credit the National Cancer Institute as the source and link to the original NCI product using the original product's title; e.g., “NCPDP Terminology was originally published by the National Cancer Institute.”

Email