Price concessions.
Temporary reimbursement increases granted when pharmacies cannot buy at the Drug Tariff price. The closest thing open data has to a shortage signal.
When wholesale prices spike above the Drug Tariff reimbursement price, pharmacies would dispense at a loss, so the Department of Health and Social Care grants a price concession: a temporary higher price for that month. The list is published monthly and grows as the month goes on.
Concessions are the pragmatic marker of supply trouble. A molecule that appears on the list month after month is a molecule whose market is strained, and the cost-per-item line in the prescribing data will show the bill. Repeated concessions preceded most of the memorable UK generic shortages of the last decade.
Category M · The Drug Tariff category where generic reimbursement prices are reset quarterly from manufacturer sales data. The reason generic prices move in steps.
Net ingredient cost (NIC) · The list price of what was dispensed, before discounts. The spend figure in open prescribing data, and a ceiling rather than a bill.
See it on a real molecule.
Every molecule page uses this term somewhere: in the scorecard, the charts or the honesty strip. The definitions live here; the numbers live there.