FOI-03626

Thank you for your request for information about the following:

##Request

<i>You asked us:

Please provide, for each calendar year from 2020 to 2025, the following:

The total number of prescription items dispensed in the community in England for the following drugs (including all brand and generic forms):<br>
Testosterone<br>
Testosterone undecanoate<br>
Testosterone enantate<br>
Testosterone cypionate<br>
Testosterone propionate<br>
Testosterone gels (including Testogel, Tostran, Testim)<br>
Any other testosterone replacement therapy preparations

For each year, please also provide:<br>
The total number of unique patients receiving these prescriptions (if held)<br>
The total Net Ingredient Cost

If held, please provide a breakdown of the number of patients receiving these prescriptions by:<br>
Age band (for example: under 30, 30–39, 40–49, 50–59, 60+)<br>
Sex</i>

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 23 February 2026.

We have handled your request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000.

##Our response

I can confirm that the NHSBSA holds the information you have requested and a copy of the information is attached.

Please read the below notes to ensure correct understanding of the data.

Testosterone prescriptions and net ingredient cost, dispensed in England and aggregated by patient gender and age band.

<b>NHSBSA</b><br>
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.

<b>Data Source: ePACT2</b><br>
Data in ePACT2 is sourced from the NHSBSA 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: <br>
• items not dispensed, disallowed and those returned to the contractor for further clarification. <br>
• prescriptions prescribed and dispensed in prisons, hospitals and private prescriptions.<br>
• items prescribed but not presented for dispensing or not submitted to NHS Prescription Services by the dispenser.

<b>Time Period: </b><br>
January 2020-December 2025. Data is aggregated by calendar year

<b>Organisation Data:</b><br>
The data is for items dispensed in England regardless of where prescribed in the community.

<b>Data:</b><br>
This dataset is limited to the dispensing of products within the BNF Chemical Substances Testosterone (0604020K0), Testosterone enantate (0604020M0), Testosterone esters (0604020U0), Testosterone propionate (0604020P0), Testosterone undecanoate (0604020T0) and Methyltestosterone (0604020H0).
As this request specifically asks about the dispensing of Testosterone gel presentations, the data is provided in two parts.

FOI_03636_ALL provides data for all presentations within the chemical substances listed above.

FOI_03636_GELS provides data for Testosterone gel presentations only- please note that the dispensing for these presentations is also included within 
FOI_03636_ALL.
For clarity, a list of the presentations included within the FOI is also provided.

<b>BNF</b><br>
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). 

<b>Gender</b><br>
Patient gender has been reported using the latest patient gender information held by the NHSBSA Information Services data warehouse at the time that the data was extracted. This uses information from either the most recent Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) message or from the last time that NHSBSA received data about the patient's gender from NHS Personal Demographics Service.    

Gender is either: Male, Female, Not Known (where no information is held) or Indeterminate (where information is held which does not confirm either Male or Female). 
 
<b>Patient Identification </b><br>
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 (age and NHS number) was only available for 98.39% of prescription items. 

<b>Patient Age</b><br>
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 show results for patients within the following age bands; Under 30, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59 and 60 or over.

Please note: Not all patient’s ages can be captured and therefore cannot be allocated to an age band. We have included these patients in an age band of Unknown to retain the gender (see Gender above).

The NHSBSA does not validate, verify or manually check the resulting information as part of the routine prescription processing.

<b>Items</b><br>
Shows the number of times a product appears on a prescription form not the quantity prescribed.

<b>NIC</b><br>
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 VIII of the Drug Tariff has been agreed between the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Community Pharmacy England the NIC will reflect the concession price rather than the Drug Tariff price. 

Your personal details will be removed from the published response.

##Data Queries

Please contact <a href="mailto: foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk"> foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk</a> ensuring you quote the above reference if you have any specific questions regarding this response; or, if you feel you may be misunderstanding or misinterpreting the information; or, if you plan on publishing the data.

##Reusing the data and copyright

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact <a href="mailto: communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk">communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk</a>. 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: “ePACT2 NHSBSA Copyright 2026”. 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.

Tags: NHS Prescription Services
Organization: Freedom of Information Disclosure Log