England: pharmaceutical prescription items dispensed per month per pharmacy 2006-2021

In financial year 2006/07, the average number of items dispensed per month per pharmacy was approximately 5.7 thousand. By 2019/20 it had risen to almost 6.6 thousand.

Further dispensing numbers

While the average amount of items dispensed was 6,565 per pharmacy in 2020/21, some 2.3 thousand pharmacies dispensed an average of over ten thousand items a month. In 2020/21, overall there were over one billion prescription items dispensed from pharmacies in England.

What is being dispensed?

The therapeutic class with the highest total of prescription items dispensed was for the cardiovascular system at over 333 million drugs, followed by drugs for the central nervous system which had approximately 219 million items dispensed. The single leading drug dispensed was atorvastatin which treats those with high cholesterol to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes.