Report published on extent of pharmacy services in England

Report published on extent of pharmacy services in England

NHS Business Services Authority has today published figures on activity carried out by community pharmacies and appliance contractors in England.

The General Pharmaceutical Services report provides information on community pharmacies and appliance contractors in England, and the NHS services they provided, between 2015/16 to 2019/20. It is a National Statistics publication and is the only national level dataset that shows this information.

Key findings of the report:

There were 11,800 active community pharmacies and 112 active appliance contractors during 2019/20. 239 new pharmacies opened during 2019/20, while 405 closed. This is the lowest number of active contractors since 2015/16.

1,046 million prescription items were dispensed by community pharmacies and appliance contractors in 2019/20. This is the highest level of dispensing in the previous five years, an 4.22% increase in items dispensed since 2015/16.

808 million prescription items were dispensed via the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) in 2019/20, 77.3% of all items dispensed in the year by community pharmacies and appliance contractors. This is an increase of 41.9 percentage points from 2015/16.

The cost of drugs and appliances reimbursed to community pharmacies and appliance contractors totalled £8,649 million in 2019/20. This was an increase of 5.10% from £8,229 million in 2018/19 following four consecutive years of decreases from the five year high of £8,664 million in 2015/16.

1.72 million seasonal influenza vaccines were administered by community pharmacies in 2019/20. This was 2.89 times more than the 595 thousand vaccines in 2015/16.

To read the full report go to: https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/statistical-collections/general-pharmaceutical-services-england/general-pharmaceutical-services-england-201516-201920