FOI 30972

Followers
0

Theme

Freedom of Information Disclosure Log

The NHSBSA's responses to Freedom of Information requests. read more

License

Open Government Licence 2.0 (United Kingdom) [Open Data]

FOI 30972

Thank you for your request for information as outlined below: Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am requesting the following information on the prescribing of testosterone gel in England: Please provide the following data regarding the prescribing of testosterone gel in England:

• Number of patients prescribed testosterone gel between January 2015 and January 2023 broken down by:

  • Month;

  • Age group (0-50 years, 50+ years);

  • Gender (Male and Female).

Please provide the information by email.

If it is not possible to provide the information requested due to the information exceeding the cost of compliance limits identified in Section 12, please provide advice and assistance, under the Section 16 obligations of the Act, as to how I can refine my request.

If you can identify any ways that my request could be refined I would be grateful for any further advice and assistance.

If you have any queries please don’t hesitate to contact me via email or phone and I will be very happy to clarify what I am asking for and discuss the request, my details are outlined below.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to your response within 20 working days. If you could please send an acknowledgement on receiving my request that would be much appreciated.

You subsequently clarified the age ranges to be:

Could you please group as 0-49 and 50+

Your clarified request was received on 18th January 2023 and has been dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Response

January 2015 – March 2015 and December 2022 – January 2023

I am writing to advise you that following a search of our paper and electronic records, I have established that the information you requested is not held by the NHS Business Services Authority. We did not capture patient information from prescriptions until April 2015. December 2022 data will be available around 20th February, and January 2023 data should be available around the end of March.

April 2015 - November 2022

A copy of the information is attached.

NHSBSA

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

April 2015 - November 2022

Organisation Data

The data provided is for prescriptions prescribed in England and dispensed in the community. No limit to the dispensing organisation has been applied.

Drug

The data is limited to prescribing of any Gel products in the BNF Chemical Substance code 0604020K0 Testosterone.

BNF Code

The BNF Code is a 15 digit code in which the first seven digits are allocated according to the categories in the BNF and the last 8 digits represent the medicinal product, form, strength and the link to the generic equivalent product. NHS Prescription Services has created pseudo BNF chapters, which are not published, for items not included in BNF chapters 1 to 15. The majority of such items are dressings and appliances which NHS Prescription Services has classified into four pseudo BNF chapters (20 to 23).

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.

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

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 where we have captured the NHS number.

Please note it is possible that a single patient may be included in the results for more than one age band where a patient has received prescribing at different ages during a month.

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 months or age bands.

Based on the criteria of the request we were able to capture the NHS number, age and gender for the below proportions of prescriptions.

NHS Number 95%

Patient Age 95%

Patient Gender 96%

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: “Data source, 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.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Source
Contact Information Governance
Version
State active
Last Updated February 2, 2023, 12:35 (UTC)
Created February 2, 2023, 12:30 (UTC)