Response

In all the back and forth with data requests for the sets of different years re the Guardian, I am still missing the financial year of 2018/2019 - to make it a complete dataset if you will - obviously I am quite happy to make another separate request.

Response

A copy of the information is attached.

Number of unique identified patients, and the total number of items, prescribed for BNF sections 0703 (Contraceptives) and BNF section 2104 (Contraceptive Devices)

NHSBSA - 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: ePACT2 - Data in ePACT2 is sourced from the NHSBSA 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.

Dataset - The data is limited to presentations prescribed in BNF sections 0703 Contraceptives and BNF section 2104 Contraceptive Devices. Data is presented at BNF Sub Paragraph, BNF Presentation and BNF Product level.

Time Period - Financial Year 2018/2019

Organisation Data - The data is for prescribing in England regardless of where dispensed in the community.

BNF Sub Paragraph, Product and Presentation 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. The majority of such items are dressings and appliances which NHS Prescription Services has classified into four pseudo BNF chapters (20 to 23).

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 96.90% of prescription items.

The unique patient count figures are based on a distinct count of NHS number as captured from the prescription image.

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 presentations or both financial years.

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

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

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01597