# Prescribing cost and volume

> Prescription items, quantities and costs normalised by registered GP patients.

- Category: NHS
- Cadence: monthly
- Status: Published on a monthly cadence.
- Dataset key: `prescribing-cost-and-volume`
- Source: [NHS Business Services Authority](https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/english-prescribing-dataset-epd-with-snomed-code)
- Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0 — [terms](https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/)
- Canonical page: [https://londongraph.com/g/prescribing-cost-and-volume](https://londongraph.com/g/prescribing-cost-and-volume)
- Machine-readable record: [https://londongraph.com/data/prescribing-cost-and-volume](https://londongraph.com/data/prescribing-cost-and-volume)

## Methodology

Monthly community prescribing assigned by registered practice postcode and divided by the matching official GP registered-patient snapshot. Area colour is limited to normalised measures; exact items, quantities, costs and patient denominators remain in details and downloads. Item counts, medicine quantity, net ingredient cost and actual cost answer different questions and are never merged into a single score. These data do not measure disease prevalence, adherence or medicines taken.

## Visualisations

- [Normalised map](https://londongraph.com/g/prescribing-cost-and-volume): Select items, quantity, actual cost or ingredient cost, each normalised by registered patients.
- [Distribution](https://londongraph.com/g/prescribing-cost-and-volume?view=distribution): Inspect prescription items per 1,000 registered patients around the London median and quartiles.
- [Volume vs cost](https://londongraph.com/g/prescribing-cost-and-volume?view=volume-cost): Compare item rate with actual cost per registered patient without combining the measures.
- [Borough detail](https://londongraph.com/g/prescribing-cost-and-volume?view=borough-detail): Inspect exact item, quantity and cost totals beside the registered-patient denominator.

## Citation guidance

Attribute the original publisher named above and identify LondonGraph as the visualisation and methodology layer. Do not describe live values as a historical census, and do not present placeholder values as observations.