NHSBSA report shows further cost decrease for dependency-forming medicines
10 March 2025
The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) has released the latest quarterly summary statistics report for dependency-forming medicines, indicating a further decrease in prescribing costs.
The report provides information on the prescribing of dependency-forming medicines in England. It includes data on five categories of medicines such as Opioid pain medicine, Gabapentinoids, Benzodiazepines, and Z-drugs. Some analysis covers antidepressants.
The key findings in quarter three 2024/25 are as follows: There were 16.9 million items for dependency-forming medicines prescribed, a 0.36% increase from quarter two 2024/25.
The cost of dependency-forming medicines prescribed was £91.1 million. This was a 2.60% decrease from quarter two 2024/25 which was £93.5 million.
Opioid drugs were the most prescribed dependency-forming medicines with 9.86 million items at a cost of £67.3 million.
There were 4.39 million identified patients that were prescribed dependency-forming medicines, a 0.16% decrease from 4.40 million identified patients in quarter two 2024/25. Female patients aged 60 to 64 was the most common group with 288,000 identified patients.
Areas of greater deprivation had the highest number of identified patients who were being prescribed dependency-forming medication. 78.5% more patients received prescribing in the most deprived areas of the country compared to those in the least deprived.
To read the full report, visit: https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/statistical-collections/dependency-forming-medicines-england/dependency-forming-medicines-england-quarterly-summary-statistics
The NHS Business Services Authority is an Arm’s Length Body of the Department of Health and Social Care. We manage over £100 billion of NHS spend annually and are responsible for providing platforms and delivering services that support the priorities of the NHS, Government and local health economies. Our purpose is to deliver business service excellence to the NHS to help people live longer, healthier lives.
Antidepressants are not included in the measures for volume, cost, or demographics. The current National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance makes the distinction
that antidepressants can cause withdrawal symptoms but are historically not dependency-forming. Additionally, the statistics for antidepressants can be found in the Medicines Used in Mental Health publication. Antidepressants are included in the co-prescribing measures in this publication
These statistics use the BNF therapeutic classifications defined in the British National Formulary (BNF) using the classification system prior to BNF edition 70. Each January the NHSBSA updates the classification of drugs within the BNF hierarchy which may involve some drugs changing classification between years of this publication. The categories of dependency-forming drugs do not align to specific sections of the BNF and have been filtered on chemical substance. A complete list can be found in appendix A of the background and methodology note that accompanies this release.
Many drugs have multiple uses, and although classified in the BNF by their primary therapeutic use may be issued to treat a condition outside of this. Due to this, these statistics may not give accurate estimations of prescribing to treat specific conditions.
These statistics do not exclude patients diagnosed with cancer and who are using an opioid to manage the pain that can be associated with malignant diseases, especially as part of end-of-life care. However, the PMR excluded opioids prescribed for cancer, using patient details from the PHE cancer registry. This means that some measures and the data for opioid pain medicines include more patients than the PMR analysis.
To exclude items used to treat an existing drug dependence or substance misuse disorder, drugs prescribed on FP10MDA instalment forms and from BNF Section 4.10 - Drugs used in substance dependence, were excluded from these statistics.
Further information on the methodology used in this publication and further background information is available in our Background Information and Methodology supporting document.
