Request

• The number of patients who have been prescribed pregabalin each year from 2012 - 2022

• Statistics on any regional break down of pregabalin prescribing, from the area with the most prescriptions for pregabalin to the least

• A break down on which settings most commonly prescribe pregabalin

Your request has been dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

We requested further details from you on 16 June 2022, and we received the following clarification from you on 28 June 2022:

• Data from April 2015 to March 2022

• Please can you provide a breakdown of total quantity provided by each of your 7 regions, monthly data from April 2019 to April 2022 (or March if you don't have data for April yet)

• Prescribing by primary care/GP/pharmacist or secondary care settings, for the same period

Response

A copy of the information is attached on two Excel spreadsheets. Please note the following when reviewing the attached information -

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

Data in ePACT2 is sourced from the NHSBSA Information Services 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 or hospitals or private prescriptions

• Items prescribed but not presented for dispensing or not submitted to NHS Prescription Services by the dispenser.

Time Period

• Financial years - 2015/2016 to 2021/2022 (Patient count data)

• Monthly April 2019 to May 2022 (Regional data)

• April 2019 to May 2022 (aggregated) (Prescriber type data).

Organisation Data

The data provided is for prescriptions prescribed in England regardless of where they were dispensed in the community. A date with the letter 'C' in brackets - example (C 01-APR-21) against Region Name indicates that this organisation is closed as of the date stated.

Dataset

This dataset is limited to Pregabalin BNF chemical substance 0408010AE and is also shown at presentation level. (Includes generic and any equivalent brands).

Items

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

Total Quantity

Total quantity is the number of items multiplied by the quantity prescribed. e.g. 2 items prescribed, one with a quantity of 2 and one with a quantity of 3, the total quantity would show as 5 (1 item x quantity of 2) + (1 item x quantity of 3).

Prescriber

Unidentified additional prescriber relates to prescription forms which contained a prescriber code for either pharmacist, optometrist, physiotherapist, dietician, paramedic, radiographer, and chiropodist/podiatrists that could not be allocated to a practice. For example, the prescriber code was invalid or illegible.

Patient Identification

Where patient identifiable figures have been reported they are based on the information captured during the prescription processing activities. Please note, patient details cannot be captured from every prescription form and based on the criteria used for this analysis, patient information (NHS number) was only available for 97.8% of prescription items.

The patient count figures are based on a distinct count of NHS number as captured from the prescription image.

The figures for the number of identifiable patients should not be combined and reported at any other level than provided as this may result in the double-counting of patients. For example, a single patient could appear in the results for multiple financial years.

Patient data is only available from April 2015.

Please note that this request and our response is published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at: https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-25530

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: “Prescriptions, 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.