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Publication, Part of

NHS Contraceptive Services, England - 2013-14, Community contraceptive clinics

Publication Date:
Date Range:
01 Apr 2013 to 31 Mar 2014

Summary

This annual report primarily presents information on Sexual and Reproductive Health services (family planning clinics and clinics run by voluntary organisations such as Brook) in England. It includes national and regional tables as well as tables by local authority and provider organisation.

Information on Sexual and Reproductive Health services excludes services provided in out-patient clinics and those provided by General Practitioners.

This has been collected since 1988-89 through the KT31 return, but since 2010-11 a quarterly attendance level collection known as Sexual and Reproductive Health Activity Dataset (SRHAD) has been running alongside the KT31 return. For this year's publication, 14 organisations submitted full year data via KT31 and 133 organisations submitted SRHAD data.

The KT31 return ceased from 1 April 2014 and all providers were mandated to move to submitting SRHAD data.  Therefore, there is an opportunity to improve the next version of this publication to exploit the richness of the attendance level SRHAD data, and feedback from users is required on some proposed changes which are detailed within this report.

Highlights

During the period April 2013 to March 2014:

  • There were 2.21 million contacts with Sexual and Reproductive Health services made by 1.34 million individuals1. This represented a decrease of 2.2 per cent (49,844) on the number of contacts in 2012-13 (2.26 million), and a decrease of 0.9 per cent (12,763) in individuals.
  • The average number of contacts per individual during 2013-14 was 1.6 which is a decrease of 1.0 per cent from 1.7 in 2012-13.
  • 89.1 per cent (1.19 million) of individuals attending were women and 10.9 per cent (0.15 million) were men.
  • 1.19 million women had at least one contact with a Sexual and Reproductive Health service, a decrease of 0.8 per cent (9,841) on the previous year. This represents 10.6 women per 100 resident population (or 10.6 per cent) (based on the female population aged 13 to 44).
  • Women aged 18 to 19 were most likely to use a service, with 21.9 per 100 population (21.9 per cent) having at least one contact with a Sexual and Reproductive Health service.
  • Oral contraceptives were the most common form of contraception in use, being the primary method for 47 per cent of women. They were the most common method in all age groups examined.
  • The use of Long Acting Reversible Contraceptives (LARCs) as a primary method of contraception amongst women has been slowly increasing and in 2013/14 accounted for 31 per cent of all women making contact with Sexual and Reproductive Health services. This compares to 18 per cent in 2003-04. LARCs are non user-dependent methods of contraception and as such are not reliant on regular user adherence.
  • The number of prescriptions dispensed for emergency contraceptives has been falling since 2000-2001 for both Sexual and Reproductive Health services and those dispensed in the community2 and is now less than half the value it was then. This fall could be due to the reclassification of EHC in 2001 which made it available for women aged 16 and over to buy EHC at pharmacies without a prescription3.

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[1] Note that if a person attends different services in the same year then they will be counted more than once, but if they attend the same service several times then they will only be counted once.  This is also applicable when talking about number of first contacts.

[2] Prescription Cost Analysis data includes prescriptions dispensed in the community, i.e. outside hospitals, and from a range of prescribers.  It includes dispensed prescriptions written predominantly by GPs, and also includes prescriptions written by dentists, hospital doctors using FP10 forms and non-medical prescribers (e.g. nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists and optometrists).

[3] Department of Health. Wider availability of emergency contraception, 2001 - https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20040112032221/http:/www.doh.gov.uk:80/ehc/index.htm

Resources

Last edited: 11 April 2018 4:32 pm