Data on the proportion of people receiving medicines is not held centrally; the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) collects data on patients who receive prescribing interventions in a range of settings, but not which drugs they are prescribed.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre publishes data on the number of prescriptions dispensed in the community and in 2012-13 just less than three million prescription items containing either methadone or buprenorphine were dispensed through primary care facilities.

In addition to methadone and buprenorphine, which are recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for treating drug misuse, drug treatment should always involve evidence based psychosocial interventions. These psychosocial interventions are designed to treat drug misuse and help drug misusers achieve specific treatment goals. They are the mainstay of treatment for the misuse of cocaine and other stimulants, and for cannabis and hallucinogens.

People receive prescribing and psychosocial interventions in different settings, and these are recorded by the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) as;

— Community;

— Primary Care;

— Inpatient Unit (prescribing in this setting is mostly for detox);

— Residential rehab; and

— Recovery House.

The NDTMS data which shows how many people received psychosocial interventions and prescribing in each of these settings, broken down into the four public health regions is in the following table.

Table 5.2.3: Interventions received by clients in treatment 2012-13, new interventions

* This is the total number of individuals receiving each intervention type and not a summation of the psychosocial and prescribing columns.

Table 5.2.3 provides information on interventions commenced after the changes to the core dataset on 1 November 2012 (see section 1.5 for more detail on this change). It shows the number of clients who received each intervention by setting for interventions starting on or after 1 November 2012 based on the new intervention codes. If a client’s intervention features in Table 5.2.3, the same intervention (for interventions that can be directly mapped between tables) is not featured in Table 5.2.2 to avoid double counting.

The data requested is not collected centrally. However, the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) collects data on people who have received a prescribing intervention, and can track if they re-enter the treatment system at a later date. The specific drugs they are prescribed or the prescribing intention is not recorded.

The following table below shows the numbers of people who indicated an opiate among their problematic substances and successfully completed treatment following a prescribing intervention, the numbers (of the above) who subsequently re-entered the treatment system within six months, and the numbers (of the above) who re-entered the treatment system indicating an opiate among their problem substances and then received a prescribing intervention.

It is important to note that since specific drugs prescribed are not recorded, we do not know which drugs were prescribed when the patient re-entered the treatment system. They may have been re-prescribed the same drug they were receiving before, or they may have been prescribed a different drug from the one they received before (e.g. they were receiving methadone, but received buprenorphine when they returned). It is also possible that they may have received prescribing for a different purpose when they returned to treatment. Some people who have received prescribing may return to treatment for support which does not involve prescribing.

The numbers recorded are those who received prescribing as part of any treatment pathway before they completed treatment, so may have been receiving a range of other interventions in different settings as part of their treatment journey (e.g. psychosocial interventions, residential rehabilitation and structured community based rehabilitation ).

Figures are presented for 2011 and 2012 calendar years. The figures for 2013 are not yet available.

The NDTMS dataset has been changed (effective from November 2012) to take better account of prescribing intentions, so now it records whether prescribing was intended for assessment and stabilisation, maintenance, withdrawal or relapse prevention.

This data is not collected centrally. The National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) collects data on patients who receive prescribing interventions in a range of settings, but not which drugs they are prescribed.

Figures on the number of people receiving prescribed opioid substitute treatment with methadone and the cost of their treatment in Harlow are not collected centrally.

We are informed by Public Health England that data is not collected centrally on spending by prisons on methadone prescriptions. Data is available on total funding allocations for clinical drug treatment,

which includes the cost of methadone prescribing, to primary care trusts in prisons over the last five years to March 2013 and is shown in the table. It is not possible to extract methadone prescription costs from the data. The cost of rehabilitative drug treatment for prisoners is also included in these totals.

From April 2011, the total allocation included funding for psychosocial interventions which had previously been funded by the National Offender Management Service. In 2012-13 the total included funding for the young persons' secure estate and for immigration removal centres.

The cost of rehabilitative health care treatments provided to offenders on probation is not collected centrally. Since April 2013, NHS England has commissioned prison drug treatment services through 10 designated local area teams (LATs). LATs will be able to enter into local agreements with other partners, including criminal justice agencies, to establish pooled budgets and deliver services including rehabilitative health care for offenders in the community. This data will be available from NHS England in future.