NHS data provides snapshot of prescribing volumes and costs in England

A new report from the NHS Business Services Authority has provided a snapshot of the cost and volume of prescriptions that have been dispensed in the community in England over the past year.

The report shows that 15,460,448 prescription items relating to the eye were dispensed in 2025-2026 at a total cost of £175,937,291 in England.

This represents a 22% drop in the total number of items dispensed for eye conditions compared to nine years ago (2016–2017), when 19,858,971 items were dispensed.

Over the same time period, the cost per prescription item for eye conditions has risen from £7.55 to £11.02 – an increase of 50%.

Across all medication categories, the most commonly dispensed prescription item was the cholesterol medication, Atorvastatin – with 78 million prescriptions dispensed over the past year.

The second most commonly prescribed medication in England was the blood pressure medication, Amlodipine (41,208,448 prescriptions) followed by the stomach acid medication, Lansoprazole (37,868,775 prescriptions).

Over the past nine years, the cost of prescription items dispensed in the community in England has increased by 27% to £11.6 billion, with 1.3 billion prescription items dispensed in 2025-2026.