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Prescription Cost Analysis - England

Prescription Cost Analysis (PCA) is a National Statistic. It provides details of the number of items and the Net Ingredient Cost (NIC) of all prescriptions dispensed in the community in England.

As well as the annual PCA National Statistics, a monthly administrative management information dataset is released by NHSBSA Prescription Information Services. This is available from January 2021 onwards from the NHSBSA Open Data Portal. This monthly data is produced with the same methodology applied as the annual national statistics. However, it is not an Official Statistic.

You can view data between February 2008 and March 2021 in a legacy format on our website.

There is a small difference between the annual PCA release and the monthly administrative data. The geographical structure used in the annual publication is the structure at the 31 March of the given year. For the monthly data the geographical structure used is the one at the end of the given month. In the rare event that a dispensing contractor changes parent organisation during the year this will reflect in the monthly data, and may mean that STP level totals will not match between aggregated monthly data and the annual National Statistics. This will not impact national totals.

From 1 July 2022, Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs) have been replaced by Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) within the NHS geographical structure. Our publications will also change from presenting data at STP level to presenting data at ICB level. Publications using data from July 2022 onwards will use the ICB level format. 

You can find further information on the move to Integrated Care Boards on the NHS Digital website.

Latest version

Prescription Cost Analysis - England 2022/23

Previous versions

Prescription Cost Analysis - England 2021/22

Prescription Cost Analysis - England 2020/21

Prescription Cost Analysis - England 2019

Previous Prescription Cost Analysis publications produced by NHS Digital (2004 to 2018)

Previous Prescription Cost Analysis publications produced by the Department of Health and Social Care (1998 to 2003)