NHS primary-care prescribing spend by BNF chapter, monthly
Monthly items and net ingredient cost for each of the 23 BNF chapters, from 2021 onwards.
In the current release
Coverage
Latest data month
About this dataset
Monthly NHS primary-care prescription items and net ingredient cost in England, aggregated to the 23 chapters of the British National Formulary — the standard therapeutic classification used across NHS prescribing analysis. One row per chapter per month. Derived from the NHSBSA Prescription Cost Analysis and updated monthly.
How it is derived
BNF presentation codes are hierarchical: the first two characters identify the chapter. Items and net ingredient cost are summed over every presentation sharing a chapter prefix, for each published month. Chapter names come from the NHSBSA BNF reference data.
What this data cannot tell you
- 1 Chapters 20 to 23 (dressings, appliances, incontinence and stoma products) are not medicines. They are included because they are part of the prescribing spend, but they should not be compared like-for-like with drug chapters.
- 2 Net ingredient cost is a list price before discounts and dispensing fees, so chapter totals overstate what the NHS finally paid — unevenly, because discount arrangements differ by product type.
- 3 A medicine licensed for several indications sits in one chapter only, so chapter totals do not map cleanly onto disease areas.
NHS primary-care prescribing spend by BNF chapter
Net ingredient cost in the latest published month, by therapeutic chapter.
Source: NHSBSA English Prescribing Dataset OGL v3.0
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Preview
The first 20 rows of 1,384.
| month | bnf_chapter_code | bnf_chapter | items | net_ingredient_cost_gbp |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-01 | 14 | Immunological Products and Vaccines | 600070 | 5788942.05 |
| 2021-01 | 09 | Nutrition and Blood | 4993018 | 57609978.32 |
| 2021-01 | 04 | Central Nervous System | 18202696 | 141898846.73 |
| 2021-01 | 22 | Incontinence Appliances | 197778 | 5039891.47 |
| 2021-01 | 15 | Anaesthesia | 118207 | 1837701.84 |
| 2021-01 | 10 | Musculoskeletal and Joint Diseases | 2391273 | 13309110.34 |
| 2021-01 | 05 | Infections | 2833628 | 17375384.9 |
| 2021-01 | 23 | Stoma Appliances | 552764 | 29197059.49 |
| 2021-01 | 18 | Preparations used in Diagnosis | 7 | 612.5 |
| 2021-01 | 11 | Eye | 1291982 | 13082092.8 |
| 2021-01 | 06 | Endocrine System | 9479936 | 123505223.88 |
| 2021-01 | 01 | Gastro-Intestinal System | 8668394 | 49071452.18 |
| 2021-01 | 19 | Other Drugs and Preparations | 80690 | 2365413.8 |
| 2021-01 | 12 | Ear, Nose and Oropharynx | 800175 | 5700561.47 |
| 2021-01 | 07 | Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Urinary-Tract Disorders | 2595214 | 21448705.98 |
| 2021-01 | 02 | Cardiovascular System | 27037255 | 130216451.28 |
| 2021-01 | 20 | Dressings | 473849 | 13368161.11 |
| 2021-01 | 13 | Skin | 2151196 | 20667482.23 |
| 2021-01 | 08 | Malignant Disease and Immunosuppression | 380503 | 15211560.67 |
| 2021-01 | 03 | Respiratory System | 5901232 | 87603812.89 |
Licence and attribution
The underlying figures are NHS open data published by the NHS Business Services Authority under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
The derived dataset on this page — the aggregation, the columns and the rates — is free to reuse, including commercially. We ask that you credit PharmaInsight with a link when you do, which is what lets other people find their way back to the method and the caveats.
How to cite
Citing a figure in something durable? Use the pinned 2026-06 snapshot rather than the latest file — it will not change when next month's data lands.
Download
-
nhs-prescribing-spend-by-bnf-chapter-latest.csv
1,384 rows · 73 KB · always current
-
nhs-prescribing-spend-by-bnf-chapter-2026-06.csv
Pinned snapshot of the June 2026 release — use this in citations
At a glance
- Source NHSBSA Prescription Cost Analysis
- Coverage January 2021 to June 2026
- Latest data June 2026
- Updates Monthly
- Format CSV, UTF-8
- Licence OGL v3.0
- Geography England
Columns
- month
- bnf_chapter_code
- bnf_chapter
- items
- net_ingredient_cost_gbp
Where we use this data
Refresh
Monthly, within a few days of the NHSBSA publication. Last published 25 August 2026.
More open data
Browse the full dataset catalogue, the sources we import from, and our methodology.