Request

‘I am conducting some work to analyse the number of stoma patients using contractor submission data which you have. I have attached a file which contains all the stoma/ostomy bags that are listed on the Drug Tariff and would like to know the following information:

1. How many patients had a prescription filled with one or more of these lines in the 12 months January-December 2021. This should be unique patients only i.e. even if they had 10 prescriptions presented they should only be counted once.

2. How many of these patients presented a prescription for the first time in 2021 and separately in 2020, again just one unique entry please. (This would tell us how many new Stoma patients there were in 2021 and 2020)

On 20 June 2022 you verbally clarified the following with one of our information analysts

'You wanted the answer both split by BNF section and for the 3 combined BNF sections’

Response

A copy of the information is attached. Please read the below notes to ensure correct 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 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

The data source was the NHSBSA Information Services Data Warehouse.

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.

Time Period

Answers are based on January 2020 to December 2021 data.

For first prescribing data is taken from all data held in the data warehouse, the first prescribing in the data warehouse for the described BNF sections with an identified patient is April 2015. Patients may have had prescribing prior to this but the data is not available prior to this point.

Drugs

Limited to the following BNF sections; 2335 Colostomy Bags 2360 Ileostomy Bags 2396 Urostomy Bags

Organisation Data

Only items that were dispensed in the community in England have been included.

Identified Patients

Patients have only been counted if their NHS number was captured during NHSBSA processing. The patient's NHS number or age may not be captured if, for example, it was not known at the time of writing the prescription, or it was hand-written on a paper prescription and the OCR scanners were unable to read it. In this request the percentage of items within the described limitations had an identified NHS number are as follows:

2014 0.00% 2015 71.68% 2016 95.27% 2017 96.14% 2018 96.43% 2019 96.89% 2020 97.37% 2021 97.47%

Questions are answered in separated CSVs as follows:

FOI24441_Q1

‘How many patients had a prescription filled with one or more of these lines in the 12 months January-December 2021. This should be unique patients only i.e. even if they had 10 prescriptions presented they should only be counted once.’

The number of unique patients with prescribing within the given BNF section (or any of the three BNF sections for ALL_BAGS) within the 2021 calendar year.

Note patients may be in more than one BNF section if they have prescribing in more than one. The ALL_BAGS data gives the unique patient count for patients in any of the three BNF sections.

The following question is answered in two CSVs, split by year.

‘How many of these patients presented a prescription for the first time in 2021 and separately in 2020, again just one unique entry please. (This would tell us how many new Stoma patients there were in 2021 and 2020)’

FOI24441_Q2_2020

Within the limitations of the data described above (i.e. this is the first known prescribing after April 2015) the data has been given in two ways, either split by BNF section or across all three BNF sections (ALL_BAGS).

For example, this means if a patient is counted in section 2335 they have had no prescribing in this BNF section (where their NHS number has been recorded on a prescription form) between April 2015 and December 2019 inclusive and do have prescribing in BNF section 2335 in the 2020 calendar year. If the patient had no prescribing in any of the three BNF sections (where their NHS number has been recorded on a prescription form) between April 2015 and December 2019 inclusive and do have prescribing in any of the three BNF sections in the 2020 calendar year then they are counted in the ALL_BAGS data.

Note patients may be in more than one BNF section if they have prescribing in more than one. The ALL_BAGS data gives the unique patient count for patients in any of the three BNF sections.

FOI24441_Q2_2021

Within the limitations of the data described above (i.e. this is the first known prescribing after April 2015) the data has been given in two ways, either split by BNF section or across all three BNF sections(ALL_BAGS).

For example, this means if a patient is counted in section 2335 they have had no prescribing in this BNF section (where their NHS number has been recorded on a prescription form) between April 2015 and December 2020 inclusive and do have prescribing in BNF section 2335 in the 2021 calendar year. If the patient had no prescribing in any of the three BNF sections (where their NHS number has been recorded on a prescription form) between April 2015 and December 2020 inclusive and do have prescribing in any of the three BNF sections in the 2021 calendar year then they are counted in the ALL_BAGS data.

Note patients may be in more than one BNF section if they have prescribing in more than one. The ALL_BAGS data gives the unique patient count for patients in any of the three BNF sections.

Data Queries

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

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact nhsbsa.communicationsteam@nhs.net. 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: “NHSBSA Copyright 2022” This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence:

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

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.