Request

Under the Freedom of Information Act (2000) I'd like to make the following request for some specific information which I understand the NHS Business Services Authority holds within its data on reimbursement of medicines.

I would like to know how frequently one of several different combinations of medicines are issued to patients.

To establish this, I am requesting a count of the unique number of patients who received any medicine within the following groups, within the same calendar month, for the following combinations:
Combinations:
1: Group P and Group A and Group C
2: Group P and Group A and Group M
3: Group P and Group A and Group T
4: Group P and Group A and Group L
5: Group P and Group M and Group C
6: Group P and Group M and Group T
7: Group P and Group M and Group L
8: Group P and Group A and (Any of Group C, M, T or L)
9: Group P and Group M and (Any of Group C, T or L)

Could I please have this information for the most recent prescribing month available, and up to 11 previous months.
I would like the information in a table similar to the one below:

Prescribing data month / year Combination number Count of patients receiving this combination Nov-23 1. 4560 Nov-23 2. 1040 Nov-23 3. 403 etc Oct-23 1. 4302 Oct-23 2. 1141 Oct-23 3. 304 etc

Finally, if possible could I also have a unique patient count for the whole 12 month period above?

The medicine groups are as follows:

Group P
Any prescription prefixed with:
0103050E0, 0103050L0, 0103050P0, 0103050R0, 0103050T0, 0103010D0, 0103010H0, 0103010N0, 0103010S0, or 0103010T0

Group A
Any of:
0501013B0AAAUAU, 0501013B0AAAVAV, 0501013B0AAABAB, or 0501013B0BCABAB

Group T
0501030V0AAAAAA or 0501030V0AAAFAF

Group C
Any of:
0501050B0AAADAD, 0501050B0AAAEAE, 0501050B0BBADAD, 0501050B0BBAEAE, 0501050B0BEAAAE, 0501050B0BFAAAE, or 0501050B0BHAAAE

Group M
0501110C0AAAJAJ or 0501110C0BCABAJ

Group L
Any of:
0501120X0AAABAB, 0501120X0BBABAB, 0501120X0BCAAAB, 0501120X0AAAAAA, 0501120X0BBAAAA, or 0501120X0BCACAA

Response

A copy of the information is attached.

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.

Exclusions

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.

Data Source

The data source was the NHSBSA Information Services Data Warehouse.

Time Period

December 2022 to November 2023 inclusive

Organisation Data

The data provided is for prescriptions dispensed in England.

Drugs

Drug group P is limited to drugs with the following BNF prefixes 0103050E0, 0103050L0, 0103050P0, 0103050R0, 0103050T0, 0103010D0, 0103010H0, 0103010N0, 0103010S0, or 0103010T0

Drug group A is limited to drugs with the following BNF prefixes 0501013B0AAAUAU, 0501013B0AAAVAV, 0501013B0AAABAB, or 0501013B0BCABAB

Drug group T is limited to drugs with the following BNF prefixes 0501030V0AAAAAA or 0501030V0AAAFAF

Drug group C is limited to drugs with the following BNF prefixes 0501050B0AAADAD, 0501050B0AAAEAE, 0501050B0BBADAD, 0501050B0BBAEAE, 0501050B0BEAAAE, 0501050B0BFAAAE, or 0501050B0BHAAAE

Drug group M is limited to drugs with the following BNF prefixes 0501110C0AAAJAJ or 0501110C0BCABAJ

Drug group L is limited to drugs with the following BNF prefixes 0501120X0AAABAB, 0501120X0BBABAB, 0501120X0BCAAAB, 0501120X0AAAAAA, 0501120X0BBAAAA, or 0501120X0BCACAA

Identified Patients

Prescriptions are only included if an NHS Number has been captured during NHSBSA processing.

Patients

Patients are counted if they have prescribing in month of any of the combination of drug groups. Patients may appear in more than one month or drug grouping. Data where the year_month column show ‘All Months’ give a unique patient count across all months within the data request.

Combinations

Combinations are as numbered, limited to patients with prescribing in all drug groupings in the combination.
1: Group P and Group A and Group C
2: Group P and Group A and Group M
3: Group P and Group A and Group T
4: Group P and Group A and Group L
5: Group P and Group M and Group C
6: Group P and Group M and Group T
7: Group P and Group M and Group L
8: Group P and Group A and (Any of Group C, M, T or L)
9: Group P and Group M and (Any of Group C, T or L)

BNF 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).

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

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01707