Request

Please could you provide me with the monthly total number of antibacterial drugs (BNF chapter 5.1) dispensed on FP10(D) forms (dental prescriptions) by community pharmacists in each of the seven NHS regions of England from January 2019 to December 2022 inclusive?

On 9 June 2022 you clarified your request as follows:

‘Hi – well spotted! I do mean December 2021’

Response

A copy of the information is attached.

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 Data Warehouse.

Time Period - The time period covered is from January 2019 up to and including December 2020.

Prescribing - Prescribing limited to dental organisations.

Dispensing - Dispensing has been limited to England only.

Drugs - Drugs are limited to antibacterial items in section 5.1 of the BNF structure.

Results are limited to items that have been reimbursed by the NHS BSA, omitting any items flagged as "Not Dispensed (ND)", "Returned Back (RB)" or "Disallowed (DA)".

"Number of Drugs" shows the unique number of chemical substances.

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

Please note that this request and our response is published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-25506

If you have any queries regarding the data provided, or if you plan on publishing the data, please contact nhsbsa.foirequests@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 Data Warehouse, 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.

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