Thank you for your request for information about the following:

‘Hello, I would like to request an update on the data regarding the number of CBPM items prescribed monthly, in the same format as FOI 23354. Specifically, I would like to know how many items of unlicensed medical cannabis were privately prescribed to patients in England each month from 01.10.2018 until the latest date for which data is available.’

Your request was received on 19 July 2023 and has been dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Response

NHS Unlicenced Drugs

Please be aware that I have decided not to release the information on prescribing of NHS Unlicenced Cannabis. This is because the patients could be identified, when combined with other information that may be in the public domain or reasonably available, such as media coverage about cannabis prescribing and the small number of people receiving these drugs.

This information falls under the exemption in section 40 subsections 2 and 3A (a) of the Freedom of Information Act.

This is because it would breach the first data protection principle as:

a) it is not fair to disclose patients personal details to the world and is likely to cause damage or distress.

b) these details are not of sufficient interest to the public to warrant an intrusion into the privacy of the patients.

Please click the below web link to see the exemption in full.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/40

Breach of Patient confidentiality

Please note that the identification of patients is also a breach of the common law duty of confidence. A patient who has been identified could make a claim against the NHSBSA for the disclosure of the confidential information.

The information requested is therefore being withheld as it falls under the exemption in section 41(1) ‘Information provided in confidence’ of the Freedom of Information Act.

Please click the below web link to see the exemption in full.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/41

Data

There are two CSV completed files; part 1 provides a monthly breakdown of private prescribing for unlicensed cannabis-based medicines.

Part 2 provides a drug list of the prescribed unlicensed cannabis-based products. This is a unique list of product names as captured with no cleansing made to this list of products. Therefore, this list is indicative of the drugs prescribed and may contain duplicates and misspellings as these are captured as free text via data entry. A manual prescription search of private prescriptions that has been taken from data captured as unspecified prescribing and reported as ‘Unspecified Drugs’ within our ePACT2 system.

Privately prescribed items are submitted to the NHSBSA for reporting and monitoring purposes only.

NHS Prescription Services

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.

Currently, private prescriptions are only required to be submitted to the NHSBSA for schedule 2 and 3 controlled drugs for monitoring purposes. This also applies to any unlicensed cannabis-based products.

Data Source

When prescriptions are processed by NHSBSA data capture, prescriptions sometimes contain prescribing of medicines that were not populated on the NHSBSA drug database at the time. This type of order will be captured as an ‘unspecified drug.’ Data for prescribing of unlicensed cannabis-based medicines has been taken from data captured as unspecified prescribing. Unlicensed cannabis-based medicines are identified by an additional review process which occurs after the prescriptions have been processed. The items identified by this review are reported against the date that the prescription was written and not necessarily when they were submitted. Therefore, these figures may be subject to change if the prescription is submitted to the NHSBSA in a later month.

This dataset

This dataset shows a list of drugs for unlicensed cannabis-based products that have been prescribed on private prescriptions.

Time Period

November 2018 to November 2022 (the latest available month).

Organisation Data

Data for private unlicensed prescriptions is limited to prescriptions dispensed in England.

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:

“NHSBSA Copyright 2023” 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.