General Pharmaceutical Services for Northern Ireland, Quarterly Series to Q4 2024/25 - Final

General Pharmaceutical Services for Northern Ireland, Quarterly Series to Q4 2024/25 - Final

Published 26 June 2025

An Accredited Official Statistics Publication
Published by: BSO Family Practitioner Services Information Unit

Contact: Bethany McDowell
Telephone: 028 9536 3783
Email: Bethany.McDowell@hscni.net

Theme: General Pharmaceutical Services
Coverage: Northern Ireland
Frequency: Quarterly

Publication date: 26 June 2025

Key Facts

Key variable	This quarter	Change since last quarter (%)	Change since last year (%)
Number of Items	11,312,000	-2.0	-1.8
Ingredient Cost (£)	121,627,200	-2.3	-2.8
Average Cost Per Item (£)	10.75	-0.2	-1.0

Quarterly Series Tables

Download the quarterly pharmaceutical services statistics by clicking on the button below. This quarterly series is a subset of the annual information with data provided for selected key tables relating to the following topics:

• Prescription items dispensed by Local Commissioning Group (Health Trust), Local Government District, British National Formulary (BNF) Chapter, Age and Gender
• Ingredient Cost of items dispensed by Local Commissioning Group (Health Trust), Local Government District, British National Formulary (BNF) Chapter, Age and Gender
• Average ingredient cost per item by Local Commissioning Group (Health Trust), Local Government District, British National Formulary (BNF) Chapter, Age and Gender
• Average total number of items per pharmacy by Local Commissioning Group (Health Trust) and Local Government District
• Average total ingredient cost per pharmacy by Local Commissioning Group (Health Trust) and Local Government District

The quarterly updates for quarters 1 to 3 within the most recent financial year should be treated as provisional until figures are finalised to produce the end of year annual and quarter 4 reports.

Download data:

Quarterly data: 131KB

Revisions

The use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology has enabled the capture of additional patients potentially previously missed as a result of unsuccessfully scanned prescriptions (see section 3 user guidance for more information). This technology has been utilised to identify patients and assign demographic information over the entire time period covered (with the exception of January 2020, for which no prescription images are available), causing a revision to the back series of affected tables beginning in 2017/18. Consequently, the figures presented in this latest report will differ from historic information in previous publications and should not be used for comparison purposes. Each trend chart affected by this revision will be denoted by (R) in the title.

As a consequence of the inclusion of OCR technology, methodological changes have been introduced in the allocation of patient residence, age and gender. This has resulted in a small number of changes to previously published figures within these demographic breakdowns.

While the adoption of OCR technology has improved the overall data quality contained in this publication, it has not been possible to guarantee the capture of every patient in each analysed period. For more information, see section 3 in user guidance.

Trend Charts

1.1 Items

Figure 1.1a: Number of Prescription Items in NI by financial quarter

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Figure 1.1a.CSV (2kB)

Figure 1.1a.XLSX (9kB)

Figure 1.1b: Items by financial quarter and Local Commissioning Group (R) Note 1

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Figure 1.1b.CSV (2kB)

Figure 1.1b.XLSX (9kB)

Note 1

Geographical location is assigned using patient address information which is captured when a prescription form has been successfully scanned or picked up by OCR. Unknowns are not included in the chart above, therefore the sub-regional totals in the chart will not sum to the NI total.

1.2 Ingredient Cost

Figure 1.2a: Ingredient cost of prescription items (before discount) in NI by financial quarter

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Figure 1.2a.CSV (2kB)

Figure 1.2a.XLSX (9kB)

Figure 1.2b: Ingredient cost of prescription items (before discount) by financial quarter and Local Commissioning Group (R) Note 2

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Figure 1.2b.CSV (2kB)

Figure 1.2b.XLSX (9kB)

Note 2

Geographical location is assigned using patient address information which is captured when a prescription form has been successfully scanned or picked up by OCR. Unknowns are not included in the chart above, therefore the sub-regional totals in the chart will not sum to the NI total.

1.3 Average Ingredient Cost per Item

Figure 1.3: Average Ingredient Cost per item by financial quarter and gender (R)

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Figure 1.3.CSV (1kB)

Figure 1.3.XLSX (8kB)

User Guidance

Prescription Items

A prescription item is a single supply of a medicine, dressing or appliance written on a prescription form. If a prescription form includes three medicines it is counted as three prescription items.

Item figures do not provide any indication of the length of treatment or quantity of medicine prescribed. Patients with a long term condition usually get regular prescriptions.

While many prescriptions are for one month (28 or 30 days supply), items will be prescribed for varying length of treatment and quantity.

Prescription Items relate to prescription forms that have been submitted on a monthly basis to the Business Services Organisation (BSO) for payment by community pharmacies, appliance contractors and dispensing doctors. These items will have been prescribed by GPs and other non-medical prescribers such as Community Nurses, Supplementary Prescribers, Dentists and a small proportion from Consultants working in the community. In addition, prescriptions written in other parts of the UK but dispensed in Northern Ireland are also included.

The data will include items that have been ordered on stock orders, hospice invoices, and pharmacy vouchers.

Only prescriptions that are subsequently dispensed are included in the dataset – for example, if a patient does not take a prescription to the pharmacy for dispensing, then no information about that prescription is included.

Ingredient Cost (before discount)

This is the basic cost of a drug or appliance as used in primary care. This is the cost at list price excluding VAT, i.e. the price listed in the national Drug Tariff, concessionary price lists, or in standard price lists and is not necessarily the price that has been paid.

It does not take into account any contract prices or discounts, dispensing costs or fees, so the actual cost to the health service will be different.

In other parts of the UK the equivalent is called the Net Ingredient Cost (NIC) and is used in Prescription Services reports and other analyses, as it standardises prescribing costs nationally, and allows comparisons of data from different sources.

Total ingredient cost may fluctuate from quarter to quarter due to temporary concessionary prices being applied to specific products to reimburse contractors.

Patient Information

Patient information is obtained from prescriptions that have been dispensed in Northern Ireland and subsequently submitted for payment to BSO. This does not include private prescriptions. Patient details are only automatically captured and recorded on prescription forms that can be scanned through the barcode on the form. The captured patient HCN is then used to link to patient registration records on the National Health Application and Infrastructure Services (NHAIS) system where information on patient age, gender and location can be assigned. This demographic information is captured based on the month the prescription was submitted for payment to BSO. Demographic information can only be obtained where a valid HCN can be matched on NHAIS.

The use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology has enabled the capture of additional patient information previously unknown as a result of unsuccessfully scanned prescriptions (see section 3 user guidance for more information). This technology has been utilised to identify patient information and assign demographic information over the entire time period covered (with the exception of January 2020, for which no prescription images are available), causing a revision to the back series of affected tables beginning in 2017/18. Consequently, the figures presented in this latest report will differ from historic information in previous publications and should not be used for comparison purposes Each table affected by this revision will be denoted by (R) in the title.

In terms of allocating prescription items to geographical areas, the largest changes occur between 2017/18 Q1 and 2018/19 Q3, when the number of unknowns decreased by between 53.6% and 61.2% and the prescription scan rate had been at its lowest. At Local Commissioning Group Level the increase in prescription items ranged from 13.2% in the Southern LCG in 2017/18 Q1 to 27.5% in the Belfast LCG in 2018/19 Q1.

Between 2018/19 Q4 and 2024/25 Q3 the reduction in unknowns ranged between 28.9% in 2019/20 Q4 and 46.6% in 2018/19 Q4. For these years the increase in items ranged from 2.3% in the Southern LCG in 2022/23 Q1 to 11.7% in the Western LCG in 2018/19 Q4.

In terms of LGD, between 2017/18 Q1 and 2018/19 Q3, the increase in prescription items ranged from 8.9% in Mid Ulster in 2017/18 Q3 to 29.3% in Derry City and Strabane in 2017/18 Q2. Between 2018/19 Q4 and 2024/25 Q3, the increase in prescription items ranged from 1.6% in Mid Ulster in 2022/23 Q3 to 14.3% in Causeway Coast & Glens in 2018/19 Q4.

While the adoption of OCR software has enabled the capture of additional patient information, otherwise recorded as ‘Unknowns’ in the data, it has not been possible to match a valid HCN from every prescription and there may still be some prescriptions that were not able to be assigned demographic or geographical information. In 2024/25 the rate of valid HCNs captured using OCR software was 41.5% of unsuccessfully scanned prescriptions, improving the overall scan rate from 91.1% to 94.8%.

Further information on scan rates by geographical location can be found in the Background Quality Report.

Geographical location is assigned using patient address postcode information linked to NISRA’s Central Postcode Directory.

Time Period

Information presented in this publication is presented by the Financial Quarter of when the payment was processed for the referenced prescription item.

It is BSO policy to make the reimbursement payments for relevant prescriptions within 30 days from when they have been submitted from the dispensing outlet.

About this publication

The Family Practitioner Services (FPS) General Pharmaceutical Services for Northern Ireland Annual Statistics 2024/25, published in June 2025, contains high level information on prescription dispensing and payments in relation to community dispensing in Northern Ireland, with comparisons against previous years. This annual information is supplemented by annex tables providing more detailed information with year-on-year comparisons.

This quarterly report provides a subset of the annual information with data provided for certain key tables. It forms a part of the quarterly reporting cycle for 2024/25. Not all tables present on an annual basis have been replicated quarterly as in many cases there is not much movement in the figures from quarter to quarter. For example certain analysis such as proximity to services does not vary greatly on a quarterly basis.

The tables in the quarterly analysis have also been provided at a higher level with fewer sub regional breakdowns. This is for ease of presentation. Further breakdowns are available on request.

This publication is in HTML format, as was introduced for the Q3 2023/24 quarterly series, and includes interactive graphics and the ability to automatically download the data presented in the charts.

This is an Accredited Official Statistics Publication.

Accredited official statistics are called National Statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 – see here for further explanation of this terminology. These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) and received formal accreditation on 11th May 2022 (see OSR Compliance Report). As such they comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

We have developed a series of statements to demonstrate how we meet the Code in our everyday work. These cover our independence, data quality procedures, how we make our statistics accessible whilst protecting your data, engage with you to meet your needs and, when things go wrong, how we make corrections or, should our services fall below the required standard, how you can make a complaint. All of this information is included in our Statistics Charter.

Since the assessment by the OSR, we have continued to comply with the Code of Practice for Statistics, and have made the following improvements:

• Introduction of a Key Facts summary, detailing headline results for the service area, and relevant trend charts in the quarterly excel releases.
• A new table was introduced for the 2023/24 Q1 publication, reporting the number of pharmacy forms and the average number of items per pharmacy form for each quarter from 2017. This table was expanded for the 2023/24 Q4 publication to include the number of pharmacies open at the end of each quarter along with the total ingredient cost.
• On 28th March 2023, a pilot User Engagement showcase event was held to advise users of the current capabilities and future developments of the statistics and obtain feedback from users.
• On 29th February 2024, the General Pharmaceutical Services quarterly series tables were published with an accompanying HTML Key Facts report for the first time. This new format contains interactive graphics and the ability to automatically download the data presented in the charts.

Our statistical practice is regulated by the OSR. They set the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to. You are welcome to contact us directly with any comments about how we meet these standards (contact the responsible statistician listed at beginning of this publication). Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or via the OSR website here.

Feedback

Feedback is welcome and if you have requirements for further quarterly breakdowns please email BSO_PrimaryCare.Statistics@hscni.net

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