NHS England reduced its spend on drugs reimbursement by £2.37 million during COVID, a report into Investment in General Practice in England shows.

The dispensing statistics for 2016/17 to 2020/21 show that in 2020-21, a total of £614m was spent on reimbursement of dispensed drugs (incl. VAT allowance and discounts). This represents a fall of 0.38% on 2019-20.

Since 2018, reimbursement in England has risen by an average of 3.47 per cent a year.

In total, during 2020-21, including reimbursement, £13,234m was spent on GP, a rise of £1,035.1m or 8.3%