Thank you for your request for information about the following:

Request

You asked us:

For the financial year 22/23, would it be possible to request data held on primary cate dispensing, for items prescribed anywhere and dispensed in primary care within England.

Could I request data be segregated to dispensed by pharmacy contractor, dispensing doctor and appliance contractors and others if applicable the total number of prescription items for each group, broken down by bnf chapter code and including nett ingredient costs and actual cost for each bnf chapter by contractor type.

You have also requested on FOI-02181 the below on 22 August 2024:

For the financial year 24/24, would it be possible to request data held on primary care dispensing, for items prescribed anywhere and dispensed in primary care within England.

Could I request data be segregated to dispensed by pharmacy contractor, dispensing doctor and appliance contractors and others if applicable the total number of prescription items for each group, broken down by bnf chapter code and including nett ingredient costs and actual cost for each bnf chapter by contractor type.

We have merged these requests into this FOI.

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 23 August 2024.

We have handled your request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000.

We requested the below clarification on 28 August 2024:

Please can you clarify what is meant by primary care, is it GPs only or anything dispensed within a primary care setting?

You replied with the following on 28 August 2024:

Would it be possible to request the data for items prescribed in any setting and dispensed by dispensing doctors, pharmacies and appliance contractors within primary care, giving a breakdown by each dispenser type.

Our response

I can confirm that the NHSBSA holds the information you have requested and a copy of the information and notes explaining it is attached.

Please read the below notes to ensure correct understanding of the data.

Number of items, NIC (£) and Actual Cost (£) for each BNF Chapter split by dispenser account type for Financial Years 2022/2023 and 2023/2024.

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.

Time Period – Financial years 2022/23 and 2023/24

Organisation Data: The data is limited to those items dispensed by either English Appliance Contractor, English Dispensing Doctor, English Personal Administration or English Pharmacy accounts.

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).

Items: Items shows the number of times a product appears on a prescription form not the quantity prescribed.

Net Ingredient Cost (NIC(£)): Net Ingredient cost (NIC) is the basic price of a drug as stated in Part II Clause 8 of the Drug Tariff but please note that where a price concession for items listed in Part VIII of the Drug Tariff has been agreed between the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Community Pharmacy England the NIC will reflect the concession price rather than the Drug Tariff price.

Actual Cost (£): The actual cost is the basic price of the drug less the National Average Discount Percentage (NADP) plus Payment for Consumables (previously known as container allowance), Out of Pocket Expenses and Payment for Containers (10p for splitting packs). The calculation for the discount amount is the basic price multiplied by the NADP. Actual Cost only relates to England.

Publishing this response

Please note that this information will be published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-02180

Your personal details will be removed from the published response.

Data Queries

If you have any queries regarding the data provided, or if you plan on publishing, the data please contact foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above reference. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

Reusing the data and copyright

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data, please contact communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement: “ePACT2, NHSBSA Copyright 2024” Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence.

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.