Drugs
A large percentage of the NHS Scotland budget is spent on prescription drugs. The biggest spend by far is in the Family Health Services sector but there is also significant expenditure in the Hospital and Community sectors as shown in the table below:
| Services | Drug Expenditure | % of Net Service Expenditure | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hospital | £296.1M |
5.7 |
|||
| Community | £120.9M |
8.3 |
|||
| Family Health | £981.6M |
40.6 |
|||
| Total | £1,398.6M |
15.4 |
|||
Hospital Sector
This expenditure includes drugs used to treat patients during their time in hospital and any medicines dispensed to patients from hospital pharmacies (or at High Street pharmacies).
Community Sector
This expenditure includes drugs used by community staff to treat patients and any prescriptions dispensed at the base hospital.
Family Health Services
The majority of prescriptions in this sector are written by GPs, with some coming from dentists and nurses. The expenditure represents the net cost to the health service of dispensing these prescriptions. The Scotland expenditure figure is summed from the annual accounts of each NHS Board. Much more detailed information is available from the Prescribing & Dispensing website.
Total pharmacy drugs expenditure in Scotland in 2011/12 by hospital and board is presented in the following tables:
R600 
[27kb] - pharmacy drugs expenditure, by NHS sector, by board
R610 [118kb] - pharmacy drugs expenditure for the hospital sector, by hospital
