Published 5 September 2024
Dependency Forming Medicines 2023/24 - Statistical Summary Narrative
Summary
This publication describes the prescribing and dispensing of dependency-forming medicines in a primary care setting in England. It does not include data on medicines used in secondary care, prisons, or issued by a private prescriber.
This publication was developed in response to the Public Health England (PHE) review of dependence and withdrawal associated with some prescribed medicines, also known as the prescribed medicines review (PMR) (PDF: 2.9 MB). Included within its recommendation was the increased availability and use of data on the prescribing of medicines that can cause dependence.
This publication provides a national view of prescribing of dependency forming medications for the use of policy makers, the general public and other users. It can be used for research and evidence when answering high-level questions.
This release includes metrics on the volume and cost of prescribing of dependency forming medications and various demographic breakdowns and breakdowns by Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) quintiles. Geographical breakdowns by integrated care boards (ICBs) are included in the supporting summary tables.
This is an experimental Official Statistics release.
Key findings:
In England in 2023/24:
There were 67 million items for dependency-forming medicines prescribed, a 1% decrease from 2015/16
The cost of dependency-forming medicines prescribed in England was £370 million. This was a 52% decrease from 2015/16 when the cost was £780 million
Opioid drugs were the most prescribed dependency-forming medicines with 39 million items at a cost of £280 million. The total cost of opioid drugs has decreased by 34% since 2015/16
There were 7.1 million identified patients that were prescribed dependency-forming medicines. This was a 13% decrease from 8.1 million identified patients in 2015/16
The most common group to be prescribed dependency-forming medicines was female patients aged 60 to 64 with 420,000 identified patients
Areas of greater deprivation had the highest number of identified patients who were being prescribed dependency-forming medication. 57% more patients received prescribing in the most deprived areas of the country compared to those in the least deprived
Resource list:
Costs and items financial year summary tables(Excel:448 KB)
Costs and items calendar year summary tables (Excel:408 KB)
Costs and items quarterly summary tables (Excel:2.14 MB)
Co-prescribing summary tables (Excel:40 KB)
Background information and methodology note (HTML)
Pre-release access list (HTML)
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- Responsible statistician: Graham Platten