Stuff that occurs to me

All of my 'how to' posts are tagged here. The most popular posts are about blocking and private accounts on Twitter, also the science communication jobs list. None of the science or medical information I might post to this blog should be taken as medical advice (I'm not medically trained).

Think of this blog as a sort of nursery for my half-baked ideas hence 'stuff that occurs to me'.

Contact: @JoBrodie Email: jo DOT brodie AT gmail DOT com

Science in London: The 2018/19 scientific society talks in London blog post

Thursday, 16 April 2020

Another big plummet in #homeopathy on the NHS England

NB - these figures relate to England only. 

There should be zero homeopathy items being dispensed on the NHS, costing zero pounds but because the prescription cost documents are published every April I assume they capture part of the preceding year.

The new prescription costs were published today and can be found here: Prescription Cost Analysis - England 2019. For previous editions see this page.

The relevant bit is in this spreadsheet
Prescription Cost Analysis 2019 – Statistical summary tables [Excel: 3.8MB] - I used Edit / Find&Replace as a way to quickly find all instances of homeop via a whole workbook search. I also checked for the variant spelling homoeop but didn't find anything.

The Chemical Substances (ho!) tab gives the overview / average and it's in Row 1764 - 2,188 items were dispensed (last year 3,295) costing £48,109.32 (last year £55,044) with the cost per item having risen by about £5 to £21.99 (compared with £16.71 last year).

The NHS dispensed a third fewer homeopathy items in 2019 than it did in 2018. Hopefully this asymptotic crawl to zero will speed up a bit in future.


Image above shows the number of homeopathic items dispensed and the cost, click to enlarge or use the text version below.

Table One
Dispensed items Of which class 2 items Total cost (£) Cost per item (£)
2,188 0 48,109.32 21.99

More detail in the Presentations tab, Rows 11708 and 11709.

Table Two
Dispensed items Of which class 2 items Total quantity Total cost (£) Cost per item (£) Cost per quantity (£) Quantity per item
529 0 49,491 3,231.72 6.11 0.07 93.56
1,659 0 120,544 44,877.60 27.05 0.37 72.66





No comments:

Post a Comment

Comment policy: I enthusiastically welcome corrections and I entertain polite disagreement ;) Because of the nature of this blog it attracts a LOT - 5 a day at the moment - of spam comments (I write about spam practices,misleading marketing and unevidenced quackery) and so I'm more likely to post a pasted version of your comment, removing any hyperlinks.

Comments written in ALL CAPS LOCK will be deleted and I won't publish any pro-homeopathy comments, that ship has sailed I'm afraid (it's nonsense).