NHS England GP Prescribing Data at Presentation Level, Monthly

General practice prescribing data lists all medicines, dressings, and appliances prescribed and dispensed monthly in England. Each record includes the total number of items, net ingredient cost, actual cost, and quantity for each presentation, linked to practice and chemical name files via codes. The data is published by NHS Digital and was last updated in July 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyze prescribing trends and volume for specific medicines based on monthly item counts.
• Compare net ingredient cost versus actual cost for pharmaceutical products.
• Study regional or practice-level prescribing behaviors based on practice code linkages.
• Map chemical substances to prescribed presentations using the linked BNF code file.

Strengths

• Monthly data sets contain over 10 million rows, indicating high granularity.
• Includes key financial metrics: total net ingredient cost and total actual cost.
• Data coverage is specific: prescriptions written in England and dispensed in the UK community.
• Linked reference files provide practice details and chemical names for coded identifiers.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count for the specific file is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic and temporal bias inherent to the NHS England source.

Provenance

Source

NHS Digital

Collection Method

Administrative records of NHS prescriptions written in England and dispensed in the community.

Time Range

Monthly coverage, specific range not stated.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:11.344165; freshness should be verified.

Geography

England (prescriptions written); dispensed in the UK community.