Thank you for your request for information about the following:

I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information from the NHS Business Services Authority. Please can you provide me with:

1 - The number of people who paid for at least 12 prescriptions at £9.35 (and £9.65 after 1 April 2023) per prescription in the 2022/2023 financial year.

2 - How many people in the 2022/2023 financial year had an active 3-month prescription prepayment certificate (PPC)? How many people in the 2022/2023 financial year had an active 12-month PPC?

3 - The average number of prescriptions purchased by people who paid for 12 or more prescriptions in the 2022/23 financial year.

4 - The average number of prescriptions purchased by people overall in the 2022/2023 financial year.

Your request was received on 19 December 2023 and I am dealing with it under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Response

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

Data Source

The data source was the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) Information Services Data Warehouse.

Organisation

The data is limited to NHS prescriptions dispensed in the community in England.

Time period

Financial year 2022/2023

The data is limited to where we could identify the patient. 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 96.43% of prescription items.

The data is limited to where the charge status held in our data against the prescription is chargeable, no distinction was made between different charge values.

For this request we have provided the number of charges rather than the number of prescription items i.e. the number of times a patient has paid the charge rather than the number of prescription items dispensed.

A charge refers to the single charge per prescription item which is paid by patients who are not exempt from the charge.

Please note some prescription items are exempt from the single charge such as free of charge contraceptives.
Also note that some items can incur more than one charge, for example two pairs of compression hosiery equalling four pieces would attract four prescription charges.

The data as held includes where prescriptions have been switched during processing. Switching is where a prescription is changed from either chargeable to exempt or exempt to chargeable.
This means that in some cases the patient may not have paid but the pharmacy was charged.
Reasons for prescriptions being switched include where the declarations on the prescription form have not been completed correctly or if patients were found to be age exempt.

NUM_PATS_12_OR_MORE_CHARGES - The count of distinct identified patients for whom there were 12 or more charges in the year

NUM_PATS_1_OR_MORE_CHARGE - The count of distinct identified patients for whom there were one or more charges in the year

AVG_NUM_CHARGES_PATS_12_OR_MORE_CHARGES - The average number of charges for patients for whom there were 12 or more charges in the year. The average is calculated by dividing the number of charges by the number of patients.

AVG_NUM_CHARGES_PATS_1_OR_MORE_CHARGE - The average number of charges for patients for whom there were one or more charges in the year. The average is calculated by dividing the number of charges by the number of patients.

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

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01608

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 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.