Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many prescriptions are dispensed daily on average in (a) the community and (b) hospitals in England.
The average number of prescriptions dispensed daily in the community in England since April 2017 is shown in the following table.
Time Period | Total number of items | Average number of items per day |
April 2017 - March 2018 | 1,106,431,880 | 3,031,320 |
April 2018 - March 2019 | 1,109,084,895 | 3,038,589 |
April 2019 - March 2020 | 1,132,043,733 | 3,093,016 |
Information for hospitals is not available in the format requested.
National Health Service prescribing and dispensing data for financial years 2017/18, 2018/19 and 2019/20 has been obtained from aggregated monthly Prescription Cost Analysis data that is published on the NHS Business Services Authority website at the following link:
https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/prescription-data/dispensing-data/prescription-cost-analysis-pca-data