Over one billion drugs dispensed in England in 2014, NHS report shows

pharmafile | April 9, 2015 | News story | Sales and Marketing |  HSCIC, NHS, drug cost, net ingredient cost, prescribing, prescription cost analysis, prescriptions 

Patients in England collected over 1.1 billion prescription items in 2014, according to NHS figures.

Statistics from the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), which collates data on behalf of the NHS, show an increase of 3%, or 34 million items, on 2013.

The latest Prescription Cost Analysis reveals the Net Ingredient Cost (NIC, or the cost of a drug before discounts, and excluding dispensing costs or fees) in 2014 was £8.9 billion. This also increased by 3% (£227 million) compared with the year before. 

Simvastatin was the most commonly prescribed drug in England in 2014, with 37.8 million items dispensed at a NIC of £50.6m. The top 20 most commonly prescribed medicines were dominated by heart drugs, painkillers, asthma inhalers, proton-pump inhibitors, antibiotics and antidepressants.

And in terms of drug costs for branded medicines, respiratory, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease drugs dominated the top 20. The NHS in England spent the most on Boehringer Ingelheim’s Spiriva (tiotropium bromide), which cost nearly £150m. GSK’s Seretide (fluticasone propionate, salmeterol xinafoate) and AstraZeneca’s Symbicort (budesonide, formoterol fumarate dehydrate) both had costs of more than £100m in 2014.

In line with figures from Diabetes UK showing the number of people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes rose from 1.4 million to around three million since 1996, the cost of dispensing the diabetes drug metformin now has the greatest individual NIC, at £96.2m.

The top 20 drugs by cost also included three other diabetes drugs: MSD’s Januvia (sitagliptin), Sanofi’s Lantus (insulin glargine) and Novo Nordisk’s Vicotza (liraglutide).

Pfizer’s Lyrica (pregabalin), which is under threat from generic alternatives available for two of its three indications, and MSD’s Ezetrol (ezetimibe), were also in the top 20.

Lilian Anekwe