Drugs: Costs
(asked on 14th July 2015) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether he has made an estimate of the annual cost to the public purse of all medicines costing over £20 issued by the NHS; and if he will make a statement.
The number of dispensed prescription items valued greater than £20.00, with the net ingredient cost (NIC), compared with the total for all dispensed prescription items, is provided for the last complete calendar year.
Prescription items written in the United Kingdom and dispensed, in the community, in England - 2014 | ||
| Items (000’s) | NIC (£000’s) |
Items with NIC greater than £20.00 | 104,576.4 | 5,295,382.8 |
All items | 1,064,573.8 | 8,852,574.9 |
Source: Prescription Cost Analysis, provided by the Health and Social Care Information Centre
Note: NIC per item is an average; it is not an exact measure of the cost of the medicine. The quantity of the medicine prescribed can vary for each prescription item.