NHS Desiccated Thyroid in England 2014 to 2016

[helvella]

In the past two and a half years (January 2014 through June 2016, inclusive), the NHS in England supplied 10,863 prescription items of desiccated thyroid with a total cost of £1,422,405.84. (Probably each item is one pot of tablets. So for someone getting 60mg plus 30mg that would be counted as two items.)

The brands/manufacturers mentioned include Armour, Nature-Throid, Erfa, WP Thyroid – though some are only identified by thyroid hormone content.

The basic data is available here:

dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u...

Make of that what you will.

[ Edited 01/11/2016: Data here was provided by Open Prescribing

openprescribing.net/

Designed and built by Anna Powell-Smith and Ben Goldacre at the EBM Data Lab, Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford. Funded by WEAHSN and The Health Foundation. Contact us: [e-mail] . ]

[Rapunzel]

Knowledge is power. What do I make of it ? Some thyroid patients are managing to convince their GPs or endos or both that NDT is worth consideration. That 'some' is a handful, on the face of it. If we could just get to the bottom of how this is managed, health might truly be unlocked.

Thanks Rod

[alangardner]

so therefore each ''script'' would be a cost of approx. £130 ...... my be worth monitoring how much the same meds are available from other sources --- i.e. how much the nhs is actually being overcharged for contracted medications ????? ....... it does bring up some raw questions that many people here have been hinting at for some time ..... a few come to mind -- the kindest at the moment to me would be collusion [ that's the kindest ] to overcharge !!!!.....alan x

[RoloHibbs]

So interesting! I was on 60mcg/day NHS-prescribed T3 for two years (costing my GP £500 per month). I then switched to NDT, with my GP's support - she agreed to monitor me but said that NHS Highland would not agree to prescribe and ignored me when I said that it was available on a named patient basis. My Endo told me that the NHS "would never, ever, ever prescribe NDT". I've been on NDT quite happily for two years now and was about to print this document off, as evidence, when I noticed that it pertains to NHS England. I don't suppose there's any equivalent information available for NHS Scotland, is there? 😀

[helvella in reply to RoloHibbs]

Although some considerable time ago, I did look for data for the other constituent countries of the UK, I didn't find nearly so much - nor such accessible - data.

I suggest you could ask Open Prescribing (see edited version of my original post at the top of the thread). Even if the answer is that they cannot help, they know an awful lot more than do I about what is avaialble - a "No" from them, while still not what you want, would be a lot more solid than a guess from me. It could also provide you with a basis for a Freedom of Information request.

You just might find something in this list of available data for Scotland:

data.gov.uk/data/search?the...

[RoloHibbs in reply to helvella]

Thanks so much Helvella - I'll let you know if I find anything!