MEDICINES · England

Medicines Optimisation

England — National — safe, effective and good value?

Geography
England
Items / 1,000
1,715
Cost / patient / yr
£181

○Figures are your practice where published; otherwise the nearest available area, marked ○.

Items / 1,000 / mth
1,715
Mar 2026
Cost / patient / yr
£181
annualised
Antibacterial % of items
2.4%
BNF 5.1 stewardship
Antibacterial / 1,000 / mth
42
BNF 5.1 items
Items / patient / yr
20.6
polypharmacy proxy
ARRS pharmacist FTE
13.1
per 100k patients
What this tells you · These figures read across NHSBSA prescribing (EPD), the registered list, ARRS PCN workforce and the QOF diabetes register for England. Every panel below is drawn only from data we actually hold at this grain.
NHSBSA EPD carries only TOTAL items, Net Ingredient Cost and antibacterial (BNF 5.1) items per practice per month — so spend-by-BNF-chapter, generic %, high-risk-combination safety indicators and DOAC adherence are not held and are omitted, not estimated.
Per-practice comparison is shown at ICB / borough / PCN scope (too many practices to table at National scope).
Community dispensing (NHSBSA "Dispensing Practices Dispensing Data") covers only practices whose prescriptions were dispensed at an English community pharmacy — a SUBSET of all practices — so it is a partial view, not total prescribing volume.

England

●England

Antibiotic stewardship over time

●EnglandNHSBSA EPD

Antibacterial (BNF chapter 5.1) items as a share of all prescription items. Blue is this scope; the dashed line is the nearest-parent benchmark — staying at or below it is the goal. (STAR-PU weighting is not held, so we show the share of items, which rolls cleanly from the data.)

Antibacterial (BNF 5.1) items are not held for enough months at this scope to show a stewardship trend.

Cost per patient vs peers

●EnglandNHSBSA EPD

Annualised Net Ingredient Cost per registered patient, practice by practice (highest first). The dashed line is the nearest-parent benchmark; far-left practices spend most per head.

No per-practice cost data is held for this scope.

Prescribing volume vs disease burden

●EnglandNHSBSA × QOF

Each dot is a practice. Right = a larger QOF diabetes register (more disease); up = more prescription items per 1,000 patients. The line is the fitted trend — practices well off it prescribe unusually much or little for their disease burden.

This scatter needs at least two practices with both prescribing and QOF diabetes-register data in scope.

ARRS pharmacist capacity vs prescribing workload

●EnglandWorkforce × EPD

Does clinical-pharmacist capacity match the prescribing load? ARRS pharmacist FTE is PCN-grain NHS workforce data (NWRS); the workload is this scope's prescribing volume per pharmacist FTE.

Pharmacist FTE
8,304.7
ARRS (Pharmacist + technician)
Per 100k patients
13.1
capacity intensity
Items / pharmacist FTE
157,356
annual workload
ARRS data
PCN
NWRS, PCN grain

ARRS workforce as at May 2026 (NWRS, PCN grain). Structured-medication-review counts are not held, so SMR rates from the mockup are omitted.

Community dispensing & EPS routing

●EnglandNHSBSA dispensing

Where this scope's prescriptions actually get dispensed: items dispensed in English community pharmacies attributed back to the originating practice (per 1,000 registered patients), and the share routed electronically (EPS). This covers only practices whose prescriptions were dispensed in England — a SUBSET of all practices — so it is a partial view, not total prescribing volume.

Items dispensed / 1,000
1,568
per month
EPS % of items
92.0%
electronic routing
Items dispensed
99,561,780
Feb 2026
Dispensing practices
9,585
subset of all practices

NHSBSA "Dispensing Practices Dispensing Data" (~3-month lag). Items are a subset of all prescribing — for total volume + cost see the panels above (NHSBSA EPD).

Practice league table — medicines optimisation

●EnglandNHSBSA + QOF↓ Sign in to download

One sortable row per practice across the value + stewardship measures we hold. Click a column to re-sort; your practice is highlighted.

Per-practice comparison is shown at ICB / borough / PCN scope (too many practices to table at National scope).

Wider area context

○Wider area context

Not specific to your practice — nearest available area, marked ○.

Prescribing volume by deprivation

○Catchment-weighted · LSOAEPD × IoD2025

In-scope practices grouped by the deprivation of the patients they serve (decile 1 = most deprived, placed against the national distribution). Bars show items per 1,000 patients; the dashed line is the scope average.

Prescribing-by-deprivation needs the catchment-weighting layer and at least two populated deciles in scope.
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