Request

Please could I have the following information: The total number of people prescribed BNF code 1306020J0 Isotretinoin items, for each of the following calendar years: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 The number of people prescribed BNF code 1306020J0 Isotretinoin items, broken down by both age (under 18, 18-25, 26-35, 36-45, 46-55, 56 and older) and gender, for each of the following calendar years: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 The total number of new people prescribed BNF code 1306020J0 Isotretinoin items, for each of the following calendar years: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 The number of new people prescribed BNF code 1306020J0 Isotretinoin items, broken down by both age (under 18, 18-25, 26-35, 36-45, 46-55, 56 and older) and gender, for each of the following calendar years: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

Response

A copy of the information is attached. Please read the below notes to gain a full 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 one 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 (DHSC) 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 NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) Information Services Data Warehouse.

Time Period
Data from January 2018 to December 2023 inclusive with reporting between January 2019 to December 2023 inclusive

Organisation Data
The data provided is for prescriptions dispensed in the community in England.

Drugs Data is limited to prescribing of drugs within BNF Chemical Substance 1306020J0 - Isotretinoin

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. Gender is displayed as Male, Female, Unknown or Unspecified.
Unknown means not recorded. Unspecified means recorded but not as either Male or Female. This could mean male, female, transitioning or transitioned, or non-binary, just that the data is unclear intentionally or not.

Age Age is as captured during NHSBSA processing with the highest age within the dataset per calendar year used.

FOI01730_PART_1 Unique patients are included if they have prescribing in the given calendar year.

FOI01730_PART_2 Unique patients are included if they have prescribing in the given calendar year and no prescribing held in the NHSBSA data warehouse in the previous year.

Patient Identified Data is limited to prescriptions where an NHS number was captured during NHSBSA processing. The number of items where an NHS number was captured within the dataset, split by calendar year, is as follows: 2018 65.16% 2019 63.95% 2020 61.81% 2021 70.95% 2022 75.84% 2023 83.04%

Suppressions Suppressions have been applied where patient counts are lower than five.