Request

Could I please request the prescribing data for unlicensed cannabis based medicinal products [CBMP] prescribed privately, from Nov 2018 until the most recent available.

I'm particularly looking for the item count, broken down on an annual basis.

Response

A copy of the information is attached. Please read the below notes to ensure correct understanding of the data.

Private prescribing of unlicensed cannabis-based medicines November 2018 to March 2023 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 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 total annual items for private prescriptions for unlicensed cannabis-based products.

Time Period November 2018 to March 2023 (the latest available month currently). Data is presented as calendar years (or part thereof).

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

Items shows the number of times a product appears on a prescription form not the quantity prescribed.