Over a third of Scottish people used Pharmacy First Scotland in 2025/26, with the service seeing an almost 60% increase in users over the last five years.
According to new data published by Public Health Scotland (PHS) today, 36% of the Scottish population – around 1.97m people – used Pharmacy First Scotland at least once between April 2025 and March 2026.
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This represents an increase of 59% since 2021/22, when 1.24m people used the service, with growth across all genders, age groups and deprived areas.
The female population accounted for 60% of service users, while the highest rate of use was seen in the zero to nine age group, at 520 people per 1,000 of the population.
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The most deprived areas saw 408 people for every 1,000 use Pharmacy First Scotland, compared to 336 people per 1,000 in the least deprived areas.
And 81% using the service received an item at least once following their Pharmacy First Scotland consultation.
Urgent supply
PHS also said the community pharmacy urgent supply (CPUS) service was used by 11% of the Scottish population at least once in 2025/26.
The CPUS allows patients to get up to one prescribing cycle of their repeat medication or appliances when they cannot obtain their prescription as usual.
Some 626,462 people used the CPUS at least once, up 26% from the 498,555 who used the service in 2021/22.
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Around 55% of CPUS users were in the 50 to 79 age group, and its use increased in older groups - 328 people per 1,000 of the population used the CPUS in the 90+ year age group, compared to just 34 per 1,0000 in the zero to nine age group.
Around 58% of users were female and 133 people for every 1,000 in the most deprived areas used the CPUS, compared to 99 per 1,000 in the least deprived areas.
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It comes after PHS’s annual report, published this month, revealed that the number of Pharmacy First Scotland consultation claims increased by 3% to over 5.7 million in 2025/26.
And it follows former pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock acknowledging that Scotland’s expanded Pharmacy First Plus service “has a broader scope” than the Pharmacy First scheme in England.
