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 a monthly basis.

Response

A copy of the information is attached.

Private prescribing of unlicensed cannabis-based medicines November 2018 to March 2023

NHS Prescription Services, within the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) process prescriptions for Pharmacy Contractors, Appliance Contractors, Dispensing Doctors and Personal Administration. This information is then used to make payments to pharmacists and appliance contractors in England for prescriptions dispensed in primary care settings. There are other arrangements 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 the 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 items per month for private prescriptions for unlicensed cannabis-based products.

Time Period

November 2018 to March 2023 (the latest available month currently). The Data is presented monthly.

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.