Published 6 June 2024.
Publication
Prescription Cost Analysis England 2023/24 - statistical summary narrative (HTML)
Summary
Prescription Cost Analysis (PCA) provides details of the costs and volumes of all prescriptions dispensed in the community in England. Data relating to medicines supplied as the Pharmacy First Clinical Pathways advanced service have been included in this publication.
The Prescription Cost Analysis (PCA) publication is an accredited official statistic release. Accredited official statistic status means that PCA meets the highest standard of trustworthiness, quality, and public value, and complies with all aspects of the Code of Practice for Statistics.
The designation of this publication as an accredited official statistic release was confirmed in May 2021 following an assessment by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). Read more about the confirmation and assessment of the PCA statistics on the Office for Statistics Regulation website.
Key findings
In 2023/24:
- the cost of prescription items dispensed in the community was £10.9 billion, a 5% increase from £10.4 billion in 2022/23
- the number of prescription items dispensed in the community was 1.21 billion, a 3% increase from 1.18 billion in 2022/23
- the most dispensed chemical substance was Atorvastatin, with 65 million items
- beclometasone dipropionate was the chemical substance with the highest costs, of £320 million
- Forxiga 10mg tablets was the presentation with the largest increase in cost from 2022/23, with an absolute increase of £90 million
Resource list
National summary tables - financial year (Excel: 13.6MB)
National summary tables - calendar year (Excel: 13.7MB)
ICB summary tables - financial year (Excel: 217.9MB)
ICB summary tables - calendar year (Excel: 219.8MB)
Additional tables (Excel: 121KB)
Background information and methodology note (HTML)
Pre-release access list (HTML)
This publication has been produced using a reproducible analytical pipeline (RAP) as part of our commitment to transparency and open code. You can view the code used in this RAP on our Prescription Cost Analysis GitHub repository.
Management information
This data has been released to complement the Prescription Cost Analysis statistics, but is management information and is not an official statistic.
Exemption category management information (Excel: 21KB)
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Contact us
If you have any questions, comments, or would like more information you can email statistics@nhsbsa.nhs.uk.
Responsible statistician: Graham Platten