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Prescriptions Dispensed in the Community Statistics for 1998 to 2008: England
Cheapest drugs in 10 years
Growth continues
Dr Allan Tennant reports
18th of August 2009
The NHS Information Centre has published its latest bulletin on prescriptions dispensed in England
The findings in 2008 are:
- NIC fell by 0.6% to £8,325.5 million which is equivalent to a decrease in 2.7% in real terms.
- Prescription growth continues, with a 5.8% increase in 2008 to 842.5 million items. An increase of 46 million items.
- Thus net ingredient cost fell 6% from £10.51 to £9.88. At 1998 prices we now pay £7.79 per item, the lowest figure in 10 years.
- 65% of prescriptions were dispensed generically which accounted for 26.2% of the cost. 82.6% of prescriptions were prescribed generically.
- In 2007 each patient on average received 15.6 items; in 2008 this figure has risen to 16.4.
Previously prescribing for children and elderly was provided based on exemption, this has not occurred this year because the PPD has changed how it processes exemption data. Unfortunately this data provided separate figures for pharmacy and dispensing doctors which could be used to make comparisons.
In 2007 dispensing doctors accounted for 7.18% of dispensed items.
Between 2007 and 2008, the number of prescriptions charged at the point of dispensing rose from 56.7 million to 57.3 million (1.0 per cent). The number of free items (including prescription items covered by pre-payment certificates, no charge contraceptives and personally administered items, in both 2007 and 2008) rose from 739.6 million to 785.2 million, an increase of 6.2 per cent. Thus the majority of the increase in prescribing can safely be attributed to the elderly.
As rural and dispensing doctor populations are skewed towards an older population, one could expect that growth in prescribing by dispensing doctors will be higher. However this data is not presented.
In October 2007, an adjustment was made that lowered the cost of generic Category M drugs by £400m per year. An adjustment of £130m per year was made in October 2008, to further lower Category M medicine prices. The combination of these price adjustments, in addition to price decreases in earlier years, are the primary cause for the fall in NIC seen between 2007 and 2008.
These changes meant that CNS replaced CVS as the most expensive BNF chapter. £199 million was saved off the CVS costs. However CVS remains the largest category for items.