Request

I would like to request the following information under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000:

1. The number of NHS England nicotine prescriptions (BNF section code: 4.10.2) by patient age for 2024 only using the ages 0 through to 25 inclusive.

2. The number of unique individual patients who during the year (i) 2020, (ii) 2021, (iii) 2022, (iv) 2023 and (v) 2024 were as any time given a nicotine prescription (BNF section code: 4.10.2). Please break the results down by patient age only using the ages 0 through to 25 inclusive.

3. The number of NHS England hypnotic prescriptions (BNF section code: 4.1.1) by patient age for 2024 only using the ages 0 through to 25 inclusive.

4. The number of unique individual patients who during the year (i) 2020, (ii) 2021, (iii) 2022, (iv) 2023 and (v) 2024 were as any time given a hypnotic prescription (BNF section code: 4.1.1). Please break the results down by patient age only using the ages 0 through to 25 inclusive.

Response

I can confirm that the NHSBSA holds the information you have requested and a copy of the information is attached.

Please read the below notes to ensure correct understanding of the data.

Prescribing in England for products within BNF paragraphs Hypnotics (BNF 040101) and Nicotine dependence (BNF 041002) for patients aged 0 to 25.

NHS Prescription Services process prescriptions for pharmacy contractors, appliance contractors, dispensing doctors and personal administration with information then used to make payments to pharmacists and appliance contractors in England for prescriptions dispensed in primary care settings (other arrangements are in place for making payments to dispensing doctors and personal administration). This involves processing over 1 billion prescription items and payments totalling over £9 billion each year. The information gathered from this process is then used to provide information on costs and trends in prescribing in England and Wales to over 25,000 registered NHS and Department of Health and Social Care users.

Data Source: ePACT2

Data in ePACT2 is sourced from the NHSBSA Data Warehouse and is derived from products prescribed on prescriptions and dispensed in the community. The data captured from prescription processing is used to calculate reimbursement and remuneration. It includes items prescribed in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Guernsey / Alderney, Jersey, and Isle of Man which have been dispensed in the community in England. English prescribing that has been dispensed in Wales, Scotland, Guernsey / Alderney, Jersey, and Isle of Man is also included.

The Data excludes:

• items not dispensed, disallowed and those returned to the contractor for further clarification.

• prescriptions prescribed and dispensed in prisons, hospitals and private prescriptions.

• items prescribed but not presented for dispensing or not submitted to NHS Prescription Services by the dispenser.

Time Period:

January 2020-December 2024- data is aggregated by each calendar year.

Organisation Data:

The data is for items prescribed in England regardless of where dispensed in the community.

Data:

This dataset is limited to the prescribing of products within BNF paragraphs Hypnotics (BNF 040101) and Nicotine dependence (BNF 041002) for patients aged 0 to 25. The data is broken down by 1 year age bands.

The data indicates the number of unique patients prescribed an item for each of the BNF paragraphs, aggregated by financial year. Items for which a unique patient has not been identified are also included within the dataset, providing a total number of items for patients under the age of 25.

Rows of data are only included within the dataset if a unique patient or prescribed item have been identified for the relevant age band.

Items:

Shows the number of times a product appears on a prescription form not the quantity prescribed.

Patient Identification

Where patient identifiable figures have been reported they are based on the information captured during the prescription processing activities. Please note, patient details cannot be captured from every prescription form and based on the criteria used for this analysis, patient information (age and nhs number) was only available for 97.2% of prescription items.

The patient count figures are based on a distinct count of NHS number as captured from the prescription image.

Patient ages are based on the age as captured from the prescription image and relates to the patient's age at the time of prescribing/dispensing. Results have been restricted to only show results for patients aged 25 and under with results presented by one year age bands.

Not all patient’s age can be captured and therefore cannot be allocated to an age band.

The NHSBSA does not validate, verify or manually check the resulting information as part of the routine prescription processing. It is possible that a single patient may be included in the results for more than one age band where a patient has received prescribing at different ages during the calendar year.

The figures for the number of identifiable patients should not be combined and reported at any other level than provided as this may result in the double-counting of patients. For example, a single patient could appear in the results for multiple financial years and age bands.

Data Queries

Please contact foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above reference if you have any specific questions regarding this response; or, if you feel you may be misunderstanding or misinterpreting the information; or, if you plan on publishing the data.

Reusing the data and copyright

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement: “ePACT2, NHSBSA Copyright 2025”. Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence.

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.