27 February 2025
FPS Annual Prescription Cost Analysis for Northern Ireland 2024 has been published today. This annual report is produced in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics and presents a summary of prescribing information for prescriptions issued in Primary Care in Northern Ireland in 2024. A separate report providing breakdowns by Local Commissioning Group (Health Trust) is also provided.
For the first time the PCA now includes a HTML format report, which provides a high-level overview including key trends, and a complementary dashboard to make trend analysis easier, which incorporates drill down features to facilitate analysis at a more granular level.
Check the report from here.
The dashboard can be accessed here.
Please find below a summary of key facts:
- There were 45,905,893 items dispensed in 2024 with a total spend of £500.5M, changes of 1.6% and -0.7% respectively from 2023 and increases of 10.5% and 14.3% on 2017 levels
- BNF Chapter 4 (Central Nervous System) had the most items dispensed with 11,343,210, up 1.1% from 2023 and an increase of 9.5% on 2017
- BNF Chapter 4 (Central Nervous System) had the highest ingredient cost at £102.3M, accounting for 20.4% of the total cost of all dispensed items
- Atorvastatin was the most commonly dispensed medication with 1,780,960 items dispensed, a position it has held since 2019
- Dapagliflozin was the medication with the highest ingredient cost at £10.6M, making up 2.1% of all expenditure
All information can be accessed on the BSO website by clicking on the following link: Prescription Cost Analysis for Northern Ireland 2024