Published 6 October 2022
Summary
This publication aims to describe the prescribing of hormone replacement therapy medications in a primary care setting in England that are dispensed in the community. This does not include data on medicines used in secondary care, prisons, or issued by a private prescriber.
This publication is a new ad-hoc experimental Official Statistic which has been released to support the work being undertaken by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), NHS England, and HRT suppliers.
It's intended to provide a national view of prescribing of hormone replacement therapy for the use of policy makers, the general public and other users, and to be available to answer any high-level questions in this area.
This release includes metrics on the volume and cost of prescribing of hormone replacement therapy and the number of patients receiving prescribing for these drugs. Various demographic breakdowns, including by a measure of deprivation, and a geographical breakdown by Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) are also included.
Key findings
In England in 2021/22:
- 7.80 million items for HRT were prescribed, a 35.0% increase from 2020/21
- an estimated 1.93 million identified patients were prescribed HRT
- there was a 30.5% increase in estimated identified patients being prescribed HRT, from an estimated 1.48 million in 2020/21
- areas of greater deprivation had the lowest number of estimated identified patients who were being prescribed HRT
- almost twice as many patients received prescribing in the least deprived areas of the country compared to the most deprived
- a greater proportion of the estimated identified patients from the most deprived areas of the country who received HRT prescribing were under the age of 60
- 76.6% of the estimated identified patients in the most deprived areas were under 60
- 64.6% of the estimated identified patients from the least deprived areas were under 60
Resource list
Financial year summary tables (Excel: 333KB)
Monthly summary tables (Excel: 2.7MB)
Background information and methodology note (HTML)
Pre-release access list (ODT: 218KB)
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Responsible statistician: Graham Platten