Thank you for your request for information about the following:

For England how many patients have been prescribed opioid analgesics, excluding cancer patients for

a) All three months between June 2023 and August 2023

b) All six months between March 2022 and August 2023

c) All 12 months between September 2022 and August 2023

d) All 24 months between September 2021 and August 2023

If possible, please breakdown by ICS area or England region. Also, if cancer patients cannot be excluded, please provide total figures.

For England, how many patients have been prescribed antidepressants AND opioid analgesics, excluding cancer patients (if possible)

a) All three months between June 2023 and August 2023

b) All six months between March 2022 and August 2023

c) c) All 12 months between September 2022 and August 2023

d) All 24 months between September 2021 and August 2023

If possible, please break down by ICS area or England region It appears this information may be available on the NHSBSA Opioid Prescribing Comparators Dashboard?

We clarified that ‘England’ is defined as all English prescribing and dispensing

Your request was received on 21 September 2023 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: NHSBSA Information Services Data Warehouse Summary:
FOI01445_ICB.csv shows the answer broken down by ICB - FOI01445_Region.csv shows the answer broken down by Region - FOI01445_England.csv shows the answer for England

Note that the NHSBSA only holds information on prescriptions that have been issued, dispensed and claimed for. The NHSBSA does not hold information on:

• prescriptions issued, but not dispensed

• prescriptions issued, and dispensed, but not submitted to the NHSBSA by the dispenser.

There is no way for the NHSBSA to exclude cancer patients from this analysis, so the data includes ALL patients.

Time Period: Data covers prescribing between September 2021 and August 2023 inclusive.

Organisation: Data is limited to prescriptions prescribed and dispensed in England

Drugs: Opioid analgesics (excluding injectables, Co-codamol, Co-dydramol) and Antidepressants are defined as per the Opioids (Snapshot) dashboard in ePACT2.

Complete drug lists can be found on the NHSBSA website https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/access-our-data-products/epact2/dashboards-and-specifications/opioid-prescribing-comparators-dashboard Appendix 1. Section 1 (antidepressants) and Section 2.2 (Opioid Pain Medicines)

Patient Counts: Data is restricted to prescription items where a valid patient NHS number was collected during processing. For context, a valid patient NHS number was collected for 99.11% of all prescription items for the above drug groups that were prescribed and dispensed in England in the time period. Patient counts should not be aggregated or otherwise presented in any form other than as in this data set to avoid the risk of counting single patients multiple times. Prescribing of opioid analgesics in consecutive months: Patients have been counted if they have at least one prescription item in each of the months. All prescribing must have happened within the reported geographical organisation for the patient to be counted.

Prescribing of opioid analgesics and antidepressants in consecutive months: Patients have been counted if they have at least one prescription item for an opioid analgesic and at least one prescription item for an antidepressant in each of the months. All prescribing must have happened within the reported geographical organisation for the patient to be counted.

NHSBSA Prescription Services process prescriptions submitted by primary care dispensing contractors in the community England. Prescription information is then used to make payments to pharmacists and appliance contractors (in England) for prescriptions dispensed in primary care settings. This involves processing approximately 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 users.

Exclusions: The data excludes: • Items not dispensed, disallowed items, and submissions that have been 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.

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

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01445

Data Queries 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 Information Services Data Warehouse, 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.