NHSBSA 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.

Time Period
Data provided for the financial year periods covering April 2015 to March 2019, with figures reported by financial year.

Prescribed Items
Results 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)". Results include details for all relevant items prescribed and dispensed in England
Results restricted to only include prescribing data where records show that the prescription items were not exempt from prescription charges. Results during 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18 restricted to prescribing for patients who have received 12 or more prescriptions items in a financial year where a prescription charge has been identified. Results during 2018-19 restricted to prescribing for patients who have received 11 or more prescriptions items in a financial year where a prescription charge has been identified.

Patient Details
The patient count figures show the number of distinct NHS numbers that could be identified based on the criteria used to group the results. Based on the criteria for this request, a patient number could only be identified/verified for 91.50% of prescription items.

Please note, care should be taken when interpreting the patient counts as some patients could appear in more than one group. For example, the same patient may appear in the counts for more than one financial year. The patient numbers should not be combined and reported at any other levels than as provided in the dataset.

Patients have only been included where their age is between 16 and 59, as these patients are not automatically exempt from prescription charges based on age. The patient age has been calculated based on a combination of the data available on prescription form and information we previously received for the patient (identified by NHS number). Where the age can be identified and verified from a paper prescription form, this has been used. For electronic prescriptions, or when the patient’s age could not be identified or verified, the patient’s age has been calculated based on the date of birth and the end of the month that the prescription form was submitted to the NHSBSA to be processed.

Data Quality Concerns
Prescribing data in relation to prescription charges and exemptions is based on the exemption data as recorded during prescription processing activities and used to calculate reimbursement. This may not always accurately relate to the prescription exemptions that an individual patient may be entitled to any charges paid. For example, if a patient does not accurately complete the back of the prescription form, this will impact on the data as captured during the processing activities.  Also, if a patient marks across multiple exemption category boxes this could cause issues during the automated scanning procedure.

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 Information Services Data Warehouse, NHSBSA Copyright 2019” 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.