I am writing regarding your request for information, which I received on 19 March 2024. In that request, you asked us for the following:

1) How many medicines were supplied under the Pharmacy First service in England between its launch (31st January 2024) and 18th March 2024?

2) Please provide a list of the medicines supplied under the Pharmacy First service in England between its launch (31st January 2024) and 18th March 2024 and the conditions for which these medicines were supplied to treat.

3) Please provide the names and locations of the pharmacies that supplied the most medicines under the Pharmacy First service in England between its launch (31st January 2024) and 18th March 2024

You have subsequently clarified question three to be:

3) Please provide data on the 10 contractors for whom NHSBSA has calculated payments for the greatest number of Pharmacy First (clinical pathways) items supplied in the specified period and a list of the items supplied

Response

I can confirm that the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) does hold information on Pharmacy First activity matching your request; however, this information is currently held in an interim and unprocessed state. As such, this is a refusal notice issued under section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) to comply with the request, as doing so would exceed the appropriate limit as set out in section 12 of the FOIA.

I estimate that the cost of complying with your request would exceed the non-central Government limit of £450. The limit has been specified in The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 and represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether the NHSBSA holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

Please see the following calculations which sets out the estimated cost for compliance with this request:

Task & Approximate Staff Time (Hours)

• Scoping and Investigation for Lead analyst to access and use new data tables: 5.5
• Scoping and Investigation for QR analyst to access and use new data tables: 5.5
• Estimated time for MYS and Data Warehouse staff to answer queries generated by scoping and investigation: 2
• Develop standard Query Template for data extraction: 5.5
• QR standard Query Template for data extraction: 4
• Determine whether data meets specific query: 2.5
• Develop specific query (adapted from template): 1.5
• Test Specific Query (time assumes limited prior experience with dataset): 1.5
• Assemble output of query into suitable format, produce Documentation and notes (assumes use of standard or simple fields): 1.5
• Review final output: 1.5
• Total (hours): 31

I can also confirm that as the data is held in an interim or unprocessed state, it is not possible to submit a subsequent refined request within the appropriate limit set out above. Please be advised that after the above tasks set out above have been completed, we intend to publish detailed information on the Pharmacy First service. We do not currently have a confirmed public release date for this information but when we do, we will announce the target date(s) here - https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/data-release-calendar.

https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/prescription-data/dispensing-data/dispensing-contractors-data

The data will be made available through our Open Data Portal in due course

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/