Thank you for your request for information about the following:

Hello, thank you for fulfilling my previous request at https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01426 Could I please request the same data, but for any newer months for which data is available? i.e. July, August and September 2023.

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.

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

Source System – Insight Data Warehouse.

Time period

October 2023

This dataset

FOI 01609 has 4 files - July, August and September 2023 Pharmacy Contractors and October 2023 Appliance Contractors.

This report consists of a management information file detailing monthly Community Pharmacy and Appliance Payments by type of payment and contractor account. Payments include all drug costs, fees, patient charges, locally authorised payments, etc. Other details such as the numbers of items dispensed and patient charges collected are also included.

The management information file reflects the contractor's payment and prescription data associated with the Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) structure at the relevant payment date.

Disclosure Control The data in columns ‘METHADONE PAYMENT FEE’ and ‘CONTROLLED DRUGS FEE VALUE’ within the Pharmacy dataset have been removed following Information Governance policy.

Under Section 21 of the Act, we are not required to provide information in the response to a request if it is already reasonably accessible to you. The information you requested is available from the web links below:

National appliance contractor data for August and September 2023:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01587

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

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01609

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.