England: pharmaceutical prescription items dispensed per month per pharmacy 2006-2023

In financial year 2006/07, the average number of items dispensed per month per pharmacy was approximately 5.7 thousand. By 2022/23 it had risen to nearly seven thousand.

Further dispensing numbers

While the average amount of items dispensed was 6,966 per pharmacy in 2022/23, some 2,700 pharmacies dispensed an average of over ten thousand items a month. In 2022/23, overall there were some 1.08 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 some 340 million, 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.