Request

Hello, I hope you are well? Could you please treat my request for the information below as a formal request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000: – A list of the top 100 most prescribed drugs through the NHS as of 31 March 2022, noting what form the drug takes (pill, capsule, liquid, etc). If you cannot provide this information, please contact me to discuss what information you could supply at the earliest opportunity.

Please acknowledge this FOI request by reply with a reference on receipt and avoid sending information via PDF if you can help it.

If I am mistaken and the information requested is already in the public domain, or if you have already published a similar response, please direct me to where I can find it. If you have published some of the requested information already but not all can you please point me towards what you had already published and fill in the gaps by reply?

If you feel you cannot provide all of this information, please provide what information you can in the spirit of Section 16 of FOI Act, to provide "advice and assistance, so far as it would be reasonable to expect the authority to do so, to persons who propose to make or have made requests for information."

I look forward to hearing from you promptly and at any rate, within the statutory time limit of 20 working days from your receipt of this email. Whilst writing, I take this opportunity to remind you of the Information Commissioner's public statements, in which they have stated that there is a presumption of disclosure under FOI. Please note that if this request for FOI disclosure is refused, I reserve the right to take up the matter with the Information Commissioner and/or to pursue all legal avenues of appeal.

Response

Under Section 21 of the Act, we are not required to provide information in response to a request if it is already reasonably accessible to you.

Prescription Cost Analysis (PCA) PCA data is available monthly (most recent January 2022) or yearly (financial year 2020/2021 or calendar year 2020).

Yearly - https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/prescription-cost-analysis-pca-annual-statistics Monthly - https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/prescription-cost-analysis-pca-monthly-data

There is a Data Dictionary describing each column of data once you select a time period at the bottom of the screen.

This information consists of English prescribing data issued in England and dispensed in England, Wales, Scotland, Guernsey, Alderney, Jersey, and the Isle of Man.

English Prescribing Dataset (EPD) EPD is available monthly (most recent January 2022).

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/english-prescribing-data-epd

A short video on how to use the Open Data Portal is also available at the following link: https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/open-data-portal-odp

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

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-24407