Published 5 June 2025.
Publication
Prescription Cost Analysis England 2024/25 - statistical summary narrative (HTML)
Summary
Prescription Cost Analysis (PCA) provides details of the costs and volumes of all prescriptions dispensed in the community in England. Data relating to medicines supplied as the Pharmacy First Clinical Pathways advanced service have been included in this publication.
The Prescription Cost Analysis (PCA) publication is an accredited official statistic release. Accredited official statistic status means that PCA meets the highest standard of trustworthiness, quality, and public value, and complies with all aspects of the Code of Practice for Statistics.
The designation of this publication as an accredited official statistic release was confirmed in May 2021 following an assessment by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). Read more about the confirmation and assessment of the PCA statistics on the Office for Statistics Regulation website.
Key findings
In England in 2024/25:
- 1.26 billion prescription items were dispensed in the community at a cost of £11.2 billion
- the number of items dispensed in the community increased by 4% from 2023/24 while costs increased by 2%
- the most dispensed chemical substance was Atorvastatin, a drug used to lower cholesterol and prevent heart disease, with 73 million items
- BNF Chapter 6 Endocrine System accounted for 19% of total costs
- BNF Chapter 2 Cardiovascular System accounted for 30% of all items dispensed
- Dapagliflozin, a medication mainly used to treat type 2 diabetes, was the chemical substance with the highest costs, costing £333 million
- Forxiga 10mg tablets was the presentation with the largest increase in cost from 2023/24, with an increase of £97 million - Forxiga is a brand of the chemical substance dapagliflozin
Resource list
National summary tables - financial year (Excel: 16.1MB)National summary tables - calendar year (Excel: 16.3MB)NHS region summary tables - financial year (Excel: 71.8MB)NHS region summary tables - calendar year (Excel: 72.4MB)ICB summary tables - financial year (Excel: 253.6MB)ICB summary tables - calendar year (Excel: 255.2MB)Additional tables (Excel: 127KB)Background information and methodology note (HTML)Pre-release access list (HTML)
This publication has been produced using a reproducible analytical pipeline (RAP) as part of our commitment to transparency and open code. You can view the code used in this RAP on our Prescription Cost Analysis GitHub repository.
Management information
This data has been released to complement the Prescription Cost Analysis statistics, but is management information and is not an official statistic.
Exemption category management information (Excel: 36KB)
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Contact us
If you have any questions, comments, or would like more information you can email statistics@nhsbsa.nhs.uk.
Responsible statistician: Graham Platten