Have dispensed items really risen with free prescriptions?

摘要

The headline in the print issue, "Free prescriptions in Wales lead to 5% rise in dispensed items," is misleading.Prescription charges were finally abolished fully from April 2007.1 cannot detect any step changes that might have been expected and thus associated with the policy change. For example, although figures over the past year show a 5% increase in prescriptions dispensed, since 2000 the yearly increase has fluctuated between 4% and 6%, so it would be wrong to deduce that free prescriptions alone were responsible for the increase.