‘Everyone in Bailiwick had 26 prescriptions on average’

The 1,650,969 items was a 3.1% rise on 2021, according to the Prescribing Support Unit’s annual report, which was published this week.

Chief pharmacist Teena Bhogal said both the number of prescriptions and the cost of the pharmacy service had increased in 2022

‘The cost of the pharmacy service, including fees and minus prescription charges paid by islanders, came to £21.77m., up 0.5% on 2021,’ she said.

‘This lower increase was due to a change in prescription processing mid-year.’

Islanders paid £2.386m. in prescription charges – 4.9% more than in 2021.

While just over a million prescriptions were exempt from charges, nearly 600,000 were paid for. This was a 6.6% rise in paid prescriptions compared with 2021.

The report stated that item growth and cost increases had been modest in recent years, but there had been above-average increases in paid prescriptions for the last two years.

‘The factors affecting this include an increase in antibacterial prescribing at the end of 2022 in response to the Strep B outbreak, above-average increases in prescribing of endocrine drugs for diabetes, as well as sex hormones, predominantly HRT, and new TA drugs,’ the report stated.

With psychiatric services prescription items, there was a 9% increase, but the drug costs rose by nearly 28% to £246,986, and the average cost per item rose by 17% to £18.46.

Sarnia Medical Services Ltd, which provides out of hours primary care, also saw a big rise, with its drug cost going up by 28% to £107,817, with an 11% increase in prescription items, to more than 13,600.

Les Nicolles Prison also saw a greater need for prescriptions, with more than 3,000 last year – a rise of 23% on the year before.

But not all areas saw an increase. The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service only needed half the number of prescriptions last year, with 1,766. This led to a 61% drop in the drug costs.