England: pharmaceutical prescription items dispensed per month per pharmacy 2006-2019

The average number of prescription items dispensed per pharmacy per month in England has increased year-on-year since 2006/07. In the period 2006/07, the average number of items dispensed per month per pharmacy was approximately 5.7 thousand. By 2018/19 it had risen to almost 7.3 thousand.

Further dispensing numbers

While the average amount of items dispensed was 7.3 thousand per pharmacy in 2018/19, around 2.3 thousand pharmacies dispensed an average of over ten thousand items a month. In 2018/19, overall there were over one billion prescription items dispensed from pharmacies in England. Although this is a slight decrease from the preceding year, the amount of prescriptions dispensed has increased greatly in the ten-year period displayed.

What is being dispensed?

The therapeutic class with the highest total of prescription items dispensed was for the cardiovascular system at over 324 million drugs, followed by drugs for the central nervous system which had approximately 210 million items dispensed. The single leading drug dispensed, in 2017/18, was Atorvastatin which treats those with high cholesterol to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes.