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Rural pharmacy applications soar

Success rate is also on the up

By Ailsa Colquhoun

6th of December 2011

Pharmacy applications in controlled locations are increasing both in number and in success rate, new pharmacy statistics for England suggest.

 

During 2010-11, the number of pharmacy applications made in controlled areas rose by over a fifth compared to the previous year and three in four of these applications were successful. This compares to 2009-10 when just over 61% of 103 applications made in controlled areas were successful.

 

Nineteen of the 124 applications (15%) made in controlled areas during 2010-11 were applications that are exempt from the control of entry regulations, and all were approved. Most (68%) were lodged on the basis of the 100-hours exemption. The statistical report from the NHS  Information Centre  also notes that pharmacies made a further eight applications in reserved locations.

 

During 2010-11, the success rate of pharmacy applications in controlled areas was marginally higher than in non-controlled areas, where 72.9% of 901 applications were approved. By the end of the year, there were a total of 10,951 community pharmacies in England, a rise of 2.4 per cent (260) compared to the previous year. The proportion of independent pharmacies remains static, however, at 39%.

 

80.5 million items (8.59% of all  items) were dispensed by GPs, this includes Persoanlly administered items issued by non dispensing doctors. Dispensing doctors dispensed 65.9 million items (or 7.08% of all items).  The growth in items from dispensing practices was 1.9%, lower than item growth from prescribing practices.

There were 14.7 million PA items see PD1 At NHSBSA 

 

PD1 figures 2010-11 were¨

Prescription Items dispensed Year 2010-11 (from NHSIC PD1 report)

Number

Site

%age of total

        

849816498

Pharmacy

91.34%

        

65897416

DDs

7.08%

includes PAs dispensed by DDs

14651127

PA's

1.57%

        
             

930365041

Total

100.00%

        

 

In total, pharmacies dispensed 850.7m items during 2010-11. The figure for pharmacies represents an increase of 37.3m (4.6 per cent) from 2009-10. A further point to note is that the proportion of community pharmacies dispensing higher volumes of prescriptions items per month (10,000+ items a month) has increased; in 2010-11 1,646 (15%) pharmacies dispensed 10,000 items or more per month compared with 2006-07 when 9.5% of pharmacies (960) dispensed this volume. During 2010-11, 30.8% of all prescription items were dispensed by the high volume cohort.

 

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