Summary

Diabetes is a clinical area of high expenditure. This report presents national level trends in prescribing for diabetes in England.

It looks at information on primary care prescribing for diabetes from January 2002 to March 2009. The number of prescription items and Net Ingredient Cost (NIC) are used to analyse volume, expenditure and trends in the prescribing of insulin and anti-diabetic drugs.

The report has been produced to supplement the earlier (June 2009) report jointly published by The NHS Information Centre and the Yorkshire and Humber Public Health Observatory (YHPHO) which presented data up to September 2008.

The data presented in the report covers prescriptions issued in primary care in England and dispensed in the community in the United Kingdom.

Key facts

• in the financial year 2008/09 there was a 6.9 per cent increase in the number of items prescribed for diabetes from 30.8 million (in 2007/08) to 32.9 million. Over this period there was a 1.5 per cent increase in NIC from £590.7 million to £599.3 million.
• there were 5.5 million insulin items prescribed at a NIC of £288.3 million in 2008/09. Compared with the previous financial year this was a 4.6 per cent increase in the number of items (from 5.2 million items in 2007/08) and an 8.0 per cent increase in NIC (from £267.0 million in 2007/08).
• human analogue insulins are the most commonly prescribed form of insulin. In 2008/09 they accounted for 4.2 million items (77.5 per cent of total insulin items) and £238.6 million NIC (82.8 per cent of total insulin NIC).
• in 2008/09 there were 21.2 million anti-diabetic drug items (British National Formulary section 6.1.2) prescribed at a NIC of £168.1 million. This represents a 9.9 per cent increase in the number of items (19.3 million items in 2007/08) but a 9.6 per cent fall in net ingredient costs (NIC of £186.1 million in 2007/08).