Digital
Prescription Cost Analysis (PCA) provides details of the number of items and the net ingredient cost of all prescriptions dispensed in the community in England. The drugs dispensed are listed by British National Formulary (BNF) therapeutic class.
Please note: on 7th August 2013 an updated version of the pdf file was uploaded to correct an error in the BNF section ordering. No figures have been changed.
The 2012 data are provided from the links above in three formats:
1) Portable Document Format (PDF)
In the PDF file, the number of prescription items dispensed for individual preparations, dressings or appliances is rounded to the nearest 100. There are a very large number of preparations/dressings/appliances where less than 50 items were dispensed in 2012. While accounting for nearly 40 per cent of the total number of preparations dispensed, such preparations covered just 0.01 per cent of the total items dispensed. In order, therefore, to keep the PDF file to a manageable size, such preparations have been excluded, although their figures are included in all total figures such as chemical entity and BNF groupings.
2) Spreadsheet (XLS) - Excel 2003 or later version in zipped format
The Excel file, includes data on all preparations rather than excluding products where less than 50 prescription items were dispensed. The Excel file therefore includes these totals for the following 7 levels of aggregation:
Individual preparation
Chemical entity
BNF sub paragraph
BNF paragraph
BNF section
BNF chapter
Overall total
The data in the file for prescription numbers, cost and quantity are given exactly.
3) Comma Separated Value (CSV) format
The Comma Separated Value file gives the number of prescription items dispensed for individual preparations, dressings or appliances exactly, for all preparations.
PCA