Request

Please could I request the following information under the Freedom of Information Act.

1. Please tell me how many adults were prescribed any form of statins on the NHS in primary care in England in each of the following years:

a) 2020/21

b) 2021/22

c) 2022/23

d) 2023/24

e) 2024/25

2. If possible, please tell me how many adults were prescribed any form of statins for the years specified in question 1. broken down by sex (male and female) and into the following age bands:

i) 20-29

ii) 30-39

iii) 40-49

iv) 50-59

v) 60-69

vi) 70 and over (by male and female)

Please provide the figures for the years

a) 2020/21

b) 2021/22

c) 2022/23

d) 2023/24

e) 2024/25

For example, a) for 2020/21 would show numbers of adults taking any form of statin broken down by male and female and in each of following age bands:

i) 20-29 (and by male and female)

ii) 30-39 (by male and female)

iii) 40-49 (by male and female)

iv) 50-59 (by male and female)

v) 60-69 (by male and female)

vi) 70 and over (by male and female)

And so on for the other years

b) 2021/22

c) 2022/23

d) 2023/24

e) 2024/25

Response

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

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

Number of unique patients prescribed a statin in England split by age band and gender (male or female) and financial year

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

Data in ePACT2 is sourced from the NHSBSA Information Services 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.

Data

The data shows the number of unique patients prescribed a statin in the listed age bands below by gender (male or female).

20-29

30-39

40-49

50-59

60-69

70 and over

There is also a count of all unique patients aged 20 or over prescribed a statin no matter what their gender.

Statins have been interpreted as drugs belonging to the below Chemical Substances that belong to the BNF Chapter 0212: Lipid-regulating drugs.

Atorvastatin (0212000B0)

Fluvastatin Sodium (0212000M0)

Pravastatin sodium (0212000X0)

Rosuvastatin calcium (0212000AA)

Simvastatin (0212000Y0)

Simvastatin and ezetimibe (0212000AC)

Cerivastatin (0212000C0)

Fenofibrate/Simvastatin (0212000AJ)

BNF Code

The BNF Code is a 15-digit code in which the first seven digits are allocated according to the categories in the BNF, and the last 8 digits represent the medicinal product, form, strength and the link to the generic equivalent product. NHS Prescription Services has created pseudo BNF chapters, which are not published, for items not included in BNF chapters 1 to 15. Most of such items are dressings and appliances which NHS Prescription Services has classified into four pseudo BNF chapters (20 to 23).

Time Period

The data is split into the following Financial Years – 2020/2021, 2021/2022, 2022/2023, 2023/2024 and 2024/2025.

Organisation Data

The data includes prescriptions prescribed in England and dispensed in the community.

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 (NHS number) was only available for 99.73% of prescription items.

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 more than one age band.

Data Quality for patient ages

NHSBSA stores information on the age of the recipient of each prescription as it was read by computer from images of paper prescriptions or as attached to messages sent through the electronic prescription system.

The NHSBSA does not validate, verify or manually check the resulting information as part of the routine prescription processing. However, an additional check is carried out on a yearly basis to check the capture rate and accuracy of the stored patient information.

Gender

Patient gender has been reported using the latest patient gender information held by the NHSBSA Information Services data warehouse at the time that the data was extracted. This uses information from either the most recent Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) message or from the last time that NHSBSA received data about the patient's gender from NHS Personal Demographics Service.

Gender is either: Male, Female, Not Known (where no information is held) or Indeterminate (where information is held which does not confirm either Male or Female).

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.