Published 8 August 2024.
Publication
Prescribing for Diabetes – England 2015/16 to 2023/24 - Statistical summary narrative (HTML)
Summary
Diabetes features as one of the priorities for care and quality outcomes in the NHS Long Term Plan.
This publication aims to describe the prescribing of medicines and appliances, used for the treatment of diabetes in a primary care setting in England, which are dispensed in the community. This does not include data on medicines used in secondary care, prisons, or issued by a private prescriber.
The Prescribing for Diabetes publication is an official statistics release.
Key findings:
In 2023/24:
- There were 71 million items prescribed for treating diabetes, an increase of 21 million items since 2015/16.
- The cost was £1.67 billion, which accounts for 15% of the total spend on all prescribed items. This compares to £960 million in 2015/16, which accounted for 10% of the total spending on all prescribed items.
- Antidiabetic drugs were the most prescribed drugs used in treating diabetes in England with 53 million items at a cost of £960 million. The costs of antidiabetic drugs have increased by 127% since 2015/16 from £420 million.
- There were 3.6 million identified patients that were prescribed items used in diabetes in England. This was a 7% increase from 3.4 million identified patients in 2022/23, and a 34% increase from 2.7 million in 2015/16.
- The most common group to receive prescribing for items used in diabetes in 2023/24 was male patients aged 60 to 64 with 270,000 identified patients.
- Areas with greater deprivation had the highest number of patients prescribed items for treating diabetes. There were 340,000 more patients receiving prescribing in the most deprived areas compared to the least deprived.
Resource list
Costs and items summary tables (Excel: 380KB)Patient demographics summary tables (Excel: 234KB)
Background information and methodology note (HTML)
Pre-release access list (HTML)
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Responsible statistician: Graham Platten