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General Pharmaceutical Services in England 2015-16 - 2023-24

Published 10 October 2024.

Publication

General Pharmaceutical Services - England 2015/16 to 2023/24 statistical summary narrative (HTML)

Summary

Community pharmacies and appliance contractors are responsible for dispensing medications, appliances, and medical devices to NHS patients. They are not a direct part of the NHS but provide essential services on behalf of the NHS to the general public.

This publication aims to describe the essential and advanced services that community pharmacies and appliance contractors provide, along with some of their associated costs.

The General Pharmaceutical Services (GPhS) publication is an accredited official statistic release. Accredited official statistics status means that GPhS meets the highest standards of trustworthiness, quality, public value, and complies with all aspects of the Code of Practice for Statistics.

The designation of this publication as an accredited official statistic was confirmed in December 2021 following an independent review by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).

You can read more about this confirmation and the independent review of these statistics on the OSR website.

Key findings

In England in 2023/24 for community pharmacies and appliance contractors:

  • There were 12,009 active community pharmacies and 112 active appliance contractors, the highest number of active dispensing contractors since 2015/16.
  • 1.1 billion prescription items were dispensed by community pharmacies - this was a 3% increase from 2022/23.
  • 12 million prescription items were dispensed by appliance contractors - this was a 5% increase from 2022/23.
  • 1.08 billion prescription items were dispensed via the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) - this was 96% of all items dispensed, and a small percentage increase from 2022/23.
  • The cost of drugs and appliances reimbursed totalled £10 billion - this was a 5% increase from 2022/23.

Resource list

Supporting summary tables (Excel: 112KB)

Background information and methodology document (HTML)

Pre-release access list (HTML)

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Contact list

If you have any questions, comments, or would like more information you can email statistics@nhsbsa.nhs.uk

Responsible statistician: Kirsty Gray