NHS Sussex has been ranked as having the ninth-highest prescription spending per person in England, according to a new study.
Research by Cured Pharmacy found £201.72 was spent on prescriptions for every person living in the NHS Sussex Integrated Care Board area.
The total prescription bill reached £376,524,244 across a population of 1,866,614 in the last financial year.
Integrated Care Boards are NHS organisations responsible for planning and arranging health services for people living in their areas.
Researchers analysed prescription cost data from the NHS Business Services Authority and compared it with the population served by each Integrated Care Board.
A total of 35,628,700 prescription items were recorded in Sussex, equivalent to an average of 19.1 items per person.
The study found Sussex had one of the lowest prescription volumes among the ten highest-spending areas, but recorded a higher-than-average cost of £10.57 for each item.
Sussex was only eight pence per person behind Lancashire and South Cumbria, which ranked eighth with spending of £201.80 per resident.
The Black Country completed the top ten at £200.21 per person.
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough recorded the highest prescription spending in England at £379.82 per person.
Its total prescription cost stood at more than £401 million across a population of just over one million, with each item costing an average of £17.12.
Herefordshire and Worcestershire ranked second at £347.81 per person, while West Yorkshire was third at £292.42.
West Yorkshire recorded the highest total spending among the areas included in the study, at more than £791 million.
At the other end of the table, North West London had the lowest prescription spending at £115.74 per person.
The five lowest-spending areas were all in London, with South East London, South West London, North Central London and North East London also recording comparatively low figures.
Tarun Kumar, Co-Founder and Superintendent Pharmacist of Cured Pharmacy, commented on the findings: "What stands out is the enormous variation across England. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough spends more than three times per person what North West London does, and that gap is largely driven by the cost of individual prescriptions rather than the volume. This could reflect differences in the types of medications being prescribed, such as higher proportions of specialist or newer treatments in certain areas."
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