Request

May I request updated data following on from FoI request 22304. The updated period I am requesting the data (in the same format) is January 2022 to December 2022 on a monthly basis. To be absolutely clear this is the format in FoI 22304 which I am requesting an update for: Column 1 Month Column 2 Total number of items dispensed in the community Column 3 Number of items dispensed by distance selling pharmacies in the community Column 4 Number of distance selling pharmacies.

Response

A copy of the information is attached.

December 2022

Please note that prescription data for December prescriptions is not available as those prescriptions have not been processed. The latest month available is November 2022. This data will be available from 20 February 2022.

Remaining 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

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.

Please note data for drugs flagged in our database as Schedule 2 and 3 controlled drugs have been excluded from this dataset for information security reasons to prevent the identification of organisations with high levels of controlled drug dispensing.

Time Period

January 2022 to November 2022

Organisation Data

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

Items

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-31001