Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford on 11 March (HL14049), whether any public body other than NHS Digital holds the necessary prescription level data to provide the annual cost of prescribing methadone in England for each of the last five years; and if not, why not.
The full data requested is not collected centrally or by NHS England. The data is partially held by either NHS Digital or the NHS Business Services Authority.
As part of its formal framework agreement with the Department, NHS Digital collects, processes and publishes data from across the health and social care system in England, including data on prescribing and medicines. NHS Digital reports that it does not hold the prescription level data requested but does hold data on the net ingredient cost of Methadone Hydrochloride prescription items written in the United Kingdom and dispensed in the community in England, via an FP10 prescription form. This is provided in the following table. Data is not available broken down into the cost of ordering, storage, transport, security, administration and prescription costs.
Data on local methadone prescribing and supply may be held by individual National Health Service bodies, for example, clinical commissioning groups or NHS trusts.
British National Formulary (BNF) Chemical Name | BNF 3.9.1 Cough Suppressants | BNF 4.7.2 Opioid Analgesic | BNF 4.10.3 Opioid Dependence | Total Net Ingredient Cost | |
2013 | Methadone Hydrochloride | £1,025 | £986,129 | £20,139,545 | £21,126,699 |
2014 | Methadone Hydrochloride | £1,692 | £964,223 | £18,852,099 | £19,818,014 |
2015 | Methadone Hydrochloride | £1,586 | £858,415 | £18,456,074 | £19,316,075 |
2016 | Methadone Hydrochloride | £362 | £596,809 | £17,054,254 | £17,651,425 |
2017 | Methadone Hydrochloride | £590 | £517,711 | £15,252,240 | £15,770,541 |
Source: Prescription Cost Analysis, NHS Digital
Notes:
The NHS Business Services Authority is a special health authority and arm’s length body of the Department and processes 1 billion prescription items for pharmacists who have dispensed prescriptions in England. The NHS Business Services Authority has provided data of remuneration costs from 2014 to 2018, for English pharmacies only, for the dispensing of methadone. This is provided in the following table.
Calendar Year | Remuneration for Methadone (£) |
2014 | 41,556,608.82 |
2015 | 41,647,409.24 |
2016 | 41,720,280.70 |
2017 | 45,319,400.63 |
2018 | 45,932,852.74 |
Source: NHS Business Services Authority Information Services Data Warehouse
Notes: