• Quantities of Medicines Issued: Details the total quantities of medicines stock control via NHS Secondary Care services.
• Indicative Costs: Actual costs cannot be displayed in the dataset as NHS Hospital pricing contracts and NICE Patient Access Schemes are confidential. The indicative cost of medicines is derived from current medicines pricing data held in NHSBSA data systems (Common Drug Reference and dm+d), calculated to VMP level. Indicative costs are calculated using:
  • Community pharmacy reimbursement prices for generic medicines.
  • List prices for branded medicines.
  Care should be taken when interpreting and analysing this indicative cost as it does not reflect the net actual cost of NHS Trusts, which will differ due to the application of confidential discounts, rebates, or procurement agreements paid by hospitals when purchasing medicines.
• Standardisation with SNOMED CT and dm+d: SNOMED CT (Systematised Nomenclature of Medicine - Clinical Terms) is used to enhance the dataset’s compatibility with electronic health record systems and clinical decision support tools. SNOMED CT is a globally recognised coding system that provides precise definitions for clinical terms, ensuring interoperability across healthcare systems.
• Trust-Level Data: Data is broken down by individual NHS Trusts, enabling regional comparisons, benchmarking, and targeted analysis of specific Trusts.
• Medicine Identification: Medicines in the dataset are identified using Virtual Medicinal Product (VMP) codes from the Dictionary of Medicines and Devices (dm+d):
  • VMP_PRODUCT_NAME: The name of the Virtual Medicinal Product (VMP) as defined by the dm+d, which includes key details about the product. For example: Paracetamol 500mg tablets.
  • VMP_SNOMED_CODE: The code for the Virtual Medicinal Product (VMP), providing a unique identifier for each product. For example: 42109611000001109 represents Paracetamol 500mg tablets.

Information about our NHSBSA Prescriptions Data service can be found here - Prescription data | NHSBSA

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) publishes this dataset, provided by RX Info, which contains information about pharmacy stock control in NHS Secondary Care settings across England on behalf of NHS England. It includes data from NHS Trusts and is in a standardised dm+d format (Dictionary of medicines and devices (dm+d) | NHSBSA).

For further context about the Secondary Care Medicines Data, you can explore the following resources:

Secondary Care Medicines Data Release Guidance v0.5 (Word: 78.3KB)

RX Info: RX Info is the provider of the data related to pharmacy stock control medicines issued in NHS Secondary Care settings, which is made available by NHSBSA. Visit RX Info's website for more details.

The data is sourced from NHS Trusts' pharmacy stock control systems which capture detailed records of medicines issued, including quantities.

The data is provided to NHSBSA by RX Info, a data provider that supplies records on medicines issued in NHS Secondary Care settings.

Data quality controls are in place to exclude transactions flagged as outliers, non-standardised items and zero activity. No personal or patient-identifiable information is included, ensuring compliance with data protection regulations.

Rx-Info will provide a complete annual refresh of the data two months after the close of a financial year, planned for the end May, which will then be the fixed data set accounting for backtracking. The data for the finalised view is provided to NHSBSA.

Data is from NHS England sites only and provided under the agreement entered into by Trusts and Rx-Info (Define) facilitated by NHS England. The data owners and data controllers are the respective NHS Trusts.

The finalised data is typically uploaded for a full financial year, around July each year after it has been updated. Each file represents a completed 12-month reporting period, allowing users to analyse trends over a full year.

Users wishing to be notified when the data is updated are encouraged to register for a free account on the NHSBSA Open Data Portal and Follow the dataset.

NHS Trusts in England.

This is not an official statistic.

A related official statistic can be found in our Prescribing Costs in Hospitals and the Community publication which includes Secondary Care Medicines data with actual cost, broken down by British National Formulary (BNF) Section.

If you have any queries regarding the data provided, or if you plan on publishing the data, please contact DataServicesSupport@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the name of the dataset for reference. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

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/or other applicable law. You may use the data freely, provided that you attribute the source.

NHS Business Services Authority. " Finalised Secondary Care Medicines Data (SCMD) with indicative price " NHS Business Services Authority Open Data. Accessed [Date Accessed]. URL: https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/finalised-secondary-care-medicines-data-scmd-with-indicative-price