Thank you for your request for information about the following: 

The number of patients who have been prescribed opioid analgesics for:

• All three months between January 2023 and March 2023

• All six months between October 2022 and March 2023

• All nine months between July 2022 and March 2023

• All 12 months between April 2022 and March 2023

• All 24 months between April 2021 and March 2023

Your request was received on 20th June and has been dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. 

Response

A copy of the information is attached. 

Data Source

The data source was the NHSBSA Information Services Data Warehouse. 

Exclusions 

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  

April 2021 - March 2023 

Drugs 

Limited to drugs prescribed in BNF Paragraph 4.7.2 and subparagraph 15.01.04.3 Opioid Analgesi These medicines are classified by their primary therapeutic indication. However, it is possible that they can be prescribed for other reasons outside of this primary therapeutic indication. The clinical indication of a prescription is not captured by NHSBSA during processing, and therefore we cannot determine the reason that a prescription was issued. 

Organisation Data

Prescribing is limited to prescribing in England only, but no limits on dispensing. 

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 98.7% 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 multiple time periods. 

Please note that this request and our response is published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at: 

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01250

If you have any queries regarding the data provided, or if you plan on publishing the data, please contact foidata@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above 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 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:  This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence: 

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