Request

‘For the 2021 calendar year please state how many prescriptions were issued for drugs of BNF 4.1.1 - hypnotics? Please break these prescriptions down into age groups for the people they were prescribed to in the following age brackets (i) 0-9, (ii) 10-19, (iii) 20-29, (iv) 30-39, (v) 40-49, (vi) 50-59, (vii) 60-69, (viii) 70-79, (ix) 80-89 and (x) 90 and above.

1. In relation to the drugs prescribed in 2021 could you please state how many prescriptions, and the cost was for each of the chemicals within section 4.1.1.?

2. In relation to the 2021 calendar year please state for each CCG: (i) how many prescriptions under 4.1.1 were made, (ii) the cost of these prescriptions, (iii) the total number of patients in that CCG that were provided with a prescription for this type of drug at any time during the year, and (iv) the total number of patients in this CCG.’

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 aontractors, 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 one 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

January to December 2021 accumulated.

Organisation Data

The data provided is for prescriptions prescribed in England within the Sub-Integrated Care Board Location (SICBL) structure. For more information on the NHS restructure, please visit https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/sicbls-icbs-and-other-providers/organisation-and-prescriber-changes/sub-icb-locations

Drugs

The data provided is limited to drugs within BNF Section 4.1.1 (Hypnotics)

Datasets

Part 1 (Questions 1) - The number of items prescribed per age band where the bands are: 0-9, 10-19, 20-29...100-109, 110+

Part 2 (Questions 2) - Items and NIC per chemical substance within BNF Section 4.1.1

Part 3 (Question 3) - Items, NIC, patient counts and list size per SICBL.

Patient Information

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.

Patient ages are based on the age as captured from the prescription image and relates to the patient's age at the time of prescribing/dispensing. Results have been restricted to only show results for patients aged 0 to 16 inclusive.

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 BNF Sections or SICBLs.

Data Quality for Patient ages

NHSBSA stores information on the age of the recipient of each prescription as it was read by computer from images of paper prescriptions or as attached to messages sent through the electronic prescription system.

The NHSBSA does not validate, verify or manually check the resulting information as part of the routine prescription processing. However an additional check is carried out on a yearly basis to check the capture rate and accuracy of the stored patient information. The results of this check for the most recent time period available (January 2020 to December 2020) show that for both paper and electronic prescriptions patient age was captured from 94.88% of prescription forms and the accuracy of age data captured was 99.95%.

Items

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

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 VIIIA of the Drug Tariff has been agreed between the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee the NIC will reflect the concession price rather than the Drug Tariff price.

Patient Count

Represents the number of unique, identifiable patients at the level of aggregation shown in the worksheet. Patients may appear under more than one classification, so patient totals must not be added to avoid double counting.

Average List Size

The list size for each SICBL for calendar year 2021 is calculated as an average across the monthly values.

Data Formatting Issue and Fix

Within the data, E is being interpreted in Text as Scientific notation, for example 01E00 shown as 1.00E+00

You can fix this as follows: If you open a new Excel then - go to Data – From Text - select the csv file you want – leave format as delimited – next – Comma – next – highlight the CCG column
- change to text - highlight column with the odd formatting – change to text – finish, ok when the little import box pops up.

This should let you open it without the formatting issues.

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.