FOI-02133

Thank you for your request for information about the following:

Request

You asked us:

I am writing to request an itemised list of Part IX Appliances dispensed by all dispensing contractors, including Pharmacies, Appliance Contractors, and Dispensing Doctors. Ideally, this information should cover the last two years and be presented in monthly CSV tables. Please include the following headings:

Dispenser

Dispenser type

BNF Presentation Code

BNF Presentation

Supplier Name

BNF Section Code

BNF Section

BNF Chapter Code

BNF Chapter

Total Prescriptions

Total Items

Net Ingredient Cost (£)

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 5 August 2024.

We then asked for clarification on this request with the following on 15 August 2024:

1.	We aren’t sure what you mean by ‘Total Prescriptions’, we usually report the number of prescription items, could they let us know if you mean something different by Total Prescriptions?

2.	For products in Part IX we would provide the data for dispensing of products flagged as appliances in our database, could you confirm this suits your requirements? (There are various ways we can identify appliances, that flag is probably the most consistent and matches the prep class in the published PCA data).

3.	Are you looking for data on prescriptions dispensed by any English dispensing contractors (pharmacy, appliance contractor, dispensing doctor and personal administration accounts)?


4.	By last two years, do you mean calendar years, financial years or latest 24 months we hold? The latest data we hold is May 2024.

You clarified these queries with the below on 15 August 2024:

1.	Usually in other publicly available reports there is a distinction between the total number of devices and the number of prescriptions.  It differs between the reports but often expressed as Items/Total Quantity, or Prescriptions/Quantity.  In any case I hope to see the number of individual prescription line items or number of prescription forms, and the actual number of devices, in whatever form that is expressed in your own reports is fine.

2.	That sounds fine, we also use PCA data and the categories in that seem to work.

3.	Yes, in any place where they bee dispensed on NHS prescription regardless of the type of dispenser.

4.	The most recent two financial years will be fine.

We have handled your request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000. 

##Our response

A copy of the information you have requested has been published on our website at

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-02133 

Due to the large size of the files we cannot email these to you.  

Please read the below notes to ensure correct understanding of the data.

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 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

Monthly from 202204 to 202403 

Organisation

English dispensing contractors (pharmacy, appliance contractor, dispensing doctor and personal administration accounts)

Appliances

The data is limited to dispensed products which are identified as appliances in our database. 

BNF CODE
	
The 11 characters at the beginning of a BNF code which specifies a Product (generic or branded) but not its strength or formulation.

Dispenser Code

The code of the dispensing contractor.

Dispenser Type

Categorises the dispensing contractor according to country and type of contractor. 

ITEMS

Items shows the number of times a product appears on a prescription form not the quantity prescribed.

NIC_GBP

The cost of the supplied item(s) calculated from the reimbursement price held on the NHSBSA master database.  Given in Pounds Stirling.

TOTAL_QUANTITY

Total quantity is the number of items multiplied by the quantity prescribed. e.g. 2 items prescribed, one with a quantity of 2 and one with a quantity of 3, the total quantity would show as 5 (1 item x quantity of 2) + (1 item x quantity of 3)

Publishing this response

Your personal details will be removed from the published response.

Data Queries

If you have any queries regarding the data provided, or if you plan on publishing, the data please contact foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk  ensuring you quote the above reference. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

Reusing the data and copyright

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk. 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 Warehouse, NHSBSA Copyright 2024” 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