Community pharmacies in England 2006-2023
Dispensing numbers
In 2022/23, there were 1.08 billion prescription items dispensed from pharmacies in England. The amount of prescriptions dispensed has increased in the last ten years. More than 2,700 pharmacies dispensed an average of over ten thousand items a month in 2022/23, although the average number of items dispensed per month per pharmacy was approximately seven thousand in this year.
What is being dispensed?
In 2022, the therapeutic class with the highest total of prescription items dispensed was for the cardiovascular system at some 340 million items, followed by drugs for the central nervous system which had approximately 226 million items dispensed. The leading drug dispensed was Atorvastatin which treats those with high cholesterol to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes.