Request

Please detail the number of Benzodiazepines prescribed in the date range, broken down by gender (Male, Female).

The same FOI has been successfully fulfilled before for an earlier date range which finishes in 2021. If data is not held for the most recent months, please send the latest data which is held and detail the ending date for that data collection. Please send as an Excel Spreadsheet

Date Range: 01/01/2022 to 01/01/2024

On 17 January 2024 you clarified:

1. Can I please request a unique patient count
2. Can I please request prescribed in England regardless of where they were dispensed

Response

A copy of the information is attached.

Number of Unique Identified Patients prescribed Benzodiazepines in 2022 and 2023 (aggregated)

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 – This dataset is limited by BNF chemical Substance – for a full list please refer to the FOI01632- Drugs List csv.

Time Period – Aggregated data is presented for prescribing between January 2022 and November 2023. Please note that November 2023 is currently the latest month for which prescribing data is available.

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

Gender - Patient gender has been reported using the latest patient gender information held by the NHSBSA Information Services data warehouse at the time that the data was extracted. This uses information from either the most recent Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) message or from the last time that NHSBSA received data about the patient's gender from NHS Personal Demographics Service. Please note:

Gender is either: Male, Female, Not Known (where no information is held in relation to the patient’s gender) or Indeterminate (where information is held which does not confirm either Male or Female). 

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 was captured for 97.20% of prescription items.

The 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 age bands, drug groupings and/or time periods.

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

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01632