§ Mr. MorganTo ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) pursuant to his letter of 1 April and his answer of 4 June,Official Report, column 382, what were (a) the total prescribing costs in cash terms in each year and for each category of general practitioners and (b) the total prescribing costs in 1989–90 for first wave fundholders; [33090]
(2) pursuant to his answer of 4 June, Official Report, column 382, if he will list the net ingredient cost per prescribing unit in 1989–90 for first wave fundholders; and when he expects data on prescribing costs for 1995–96 to be available. [33088]
§ Mr. MaloneData for 1990–91 are shown in the table. Information on total prescribing costs by wave of fundholders for each year for 1990–91 to 1994–95 is shown in the table. The available data for 1989–90 are not held in a form which allows analysis by wave of fundholder. Data for 1995–96, as I indicated in my earlier reply, will be available shortly.
353W
Prescribing data for General Practitioners: Non-Fundholders and Fundholders by Fundholding wave Financial years 1990–91–1994–95 Net ingredient cost (£ million) Year Non-FH FH Continuing Non-FH 1st wave 2nd wave 3rd wave 4th wave 5th wave 1990–91 2,267 0 1,375 150 133 251 222 137 1991–92 2,424 168 1,566 168 153 289 258 158 1992–93 2,552 350 1,757 184 165 326 290 179 1993–94 2,467 732 1,943 202 181 349 323 200 1994–951 2,118 1,039 1,913 204 179 350 307 204 1 For technical reasons, a proportion of items and their associated NIC values have been excluded from the 1994–95 data. The 1994–95 figures for NIC (£ millions) are not therefore comparable with those for earlier years. The 1994–95 figures for NIC per Prescribing Unit, items per PU and NIC per item are comparable with those for earlier years. 1. Prescribing budgets for both fundholders and non-fundholders are initially set in NIC (net ingredient cost, or basic price). Fundholders' budgets are then converted to actual cost and monitored on this basis. Actual cost is not exactly equivalent to "cash", as, for example, VAT is excluded.
2. All figures in the table are given in NIC, which is the common currency normally used to compare relative prescribing costs of fundholders and non-fundholders. To convert figures for individual waves into cash would involve substantial data manipulation and would not affect the comparison of different waves.
3. Timing differences mean that the figures do no correspond to national NIC figures published elsewhere. The table should therefore be used only to compare the prescribing of fundholder waves and non fundholders relative to each other.