Prescription medicines prices rose 4% in the last year.

There has been a four percent increase on the price of medicines prescribed in primary and secondary care in 2018/19, with NHS Digital data showing that hospital prescribed medicines were responsible for fifty-four percent of the costs; this is an increase of eleven percent in comparison to the previous year, while the rest of the costs were distributed into primary care.

The NHS Digital annual figures for 2017/18 conveyed a ten point eight percent increase of costs in hospital prescribed medicines on the previous year. However, since 2017/18 there has been a three percent decrease on the costs of medicines prescribed in primary care and distributed into the community. Furthermore, there was a decrease of fourteen percent on the costs of medicines prescribed in primary care and distributed in the community from 2017/18 to 2018/19.

The report from NHS Digital revealed that the “cost at list price is the basic cost of a drug, excluding VAT, and is not necessarily the price the NHS paid. It does not take account of any contract prices or discounts, dispensing costs, fees or prescription charges income, so the amount the NHS paid will be different. Discounted prices are commercially sensitive, so are not publicly available”.