Thank you for your request for information about the following:

1. The total amount of money recovered by NHS BSA – via a process known as ‘switching’ – from pharmacies due to prescription exemptions not being correctly signed off by patients in the calendar year 2020.

2. The total amount of money recovered by NHS BSA – via a process known as ‘switching’ – from pharmacies due to prescription exemptions not being correctly signed off by patients in the calendar year 2021.

3. The total amount of money recovered by NHS BSA – via a process known as ‘switching’ – from pharmacies due to prescription exemptions not being correctly signed off by patients in the calendar year 2022.

4. The total amount of money recovered by NHS BSA – via a process known as ‘switching’ – from pharmacies due to prescription exemptions not being correctly signed off by patients in the calendar year 2023.

5. The total amount of money recovered by NHS BSA – via a process known as ‘switching’ – from pharmacies due to prescription exemptions not being correctly signed off by patients in the calendar year 2024, up to and including April 30.

Your request was received on 29 April 2024 and has been dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Response

A copy of the information is attached. NHS Prescription Services process prescriptions for Pharmacy Contractors, Appliance Contractors, Dispensing Doctors, and Personal Administration with information then used to make payments to pharmacists and appliance contractors in England for prescriptions dispensed in primary care settings (other arrangements are in place for making payments to Dispensing Doctors and Personal Administration). This involves processing over 1 billion prescription items and payments totalling over £9 billion each year. The information gathered from this process is then used to provide information on costs and trends in prescribing in England and Wales to over 25,000 registered NHS and Department of Health and Social Care users.

Data Source

The data source was the NHSBSA Information Services Data Warehouse.

Organisation

The data is limited to prescriptions dispensed by English Pharmacy accounts.

Time period

Data from January 2022 to February 2024 aggregated to calendar years. 2024 only includes two months of data.

Data up to April 2024 is likely to be available in June 2024. The data is limited to where the recorded reason for switching the prescription was that the signature of the patient or patients representative was missing.

Switch Status indicates whether a form was switched or no Charge status indicates whether a form was chargeable or not. Where switched the charge status is the new charge status.

Prescription Charge GBP is the value of charges.

Charge status and switch status are held at prescription form level. Some items such as contraceptives may be on a chargeable form, but are exempt from charges.

In these cases the NHSBSA applies a charge of £0 to the item.

Please note that this request and our response is published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01891

Data Queries

If you have any queries regarding the data provided, or if you plan on publishing the data, please contact foidata@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above reference. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement:

“NHSBSA Information Services Data Warehouse, NHSBSA Copyright 2024” This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence.

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated.

Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.