Question reference: S5W-36221
- Asked by: David Torrance, MSP for Kirkcaldy, Scottish National Party
- Date lodged: 11 March 2021
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Current status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 29 April 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government how many people have received a medical prescription since charges for these began to be phased out in 2008.
Answer
Table 1 contains the number of patients with a paid prescription by financial year from financial year 2009-2010 to financial year 2020-2021 (partial year)
| Paid Financial Year | Number of Patients |
| 2009-10 | 3,981,815 |
| 2010-11 | 4,047,306 |
| 2011-12 | 4,132,694 |
| 2012-13 | 4,190,194 |
| 2013-14 | 4,209,457 |
| 2014-15 | 4,235,198 |
| 2015-16 | 4,241,495 |
| 2016-17 | 4,233,408 |
| 2017-18 | 4,220,947 |
| 2018-19 | 4,213,039 |
| 2019-20 | 4,217,893 |
| 2020-21 p | 3,721,542 |
Source: Public Health Scotland, PIS (Prescribing data)
p – partial financial year, data available until December 2020
Table 2 – Total number of patients with a paid prescription from April 2009 to December 2020.
| Total number of patients April 2009 - Dec 2020 | 6,515,438 |
Please note that the patient count in table 2 is higher than the population of Scotland as this counts individual patients across a ten-year period and will include patients who have subsequently died or left the country. Patients will receive prescriptions in multiple years and as such the same patient is counted for each year they received a prescription in Table 1. In Table 2 a patient is only counted once.