Monopoly generic pricing in secondary care
Posted in News
Prompted by a story in The Times, followed up by the BBC, about monopoly generic pricing in primary care, RX-info analysed generic medicines usage in more than 90 per cent of acute NHS hospital trusts.
For those of you who didn’t see my letter to the Pharmaceutical Journal, or our special newsletter, our analysis shows that the impact of monopoly generic pricing on secondary care spend is currently £1.4million per month, based on a benchmark date of April 2011.
This is mainly driven by soluble prednisolone tablets, and to a lesser extent, dexamethasone.
Prednisolone was, of course, highlighted in Lord Carter’s Review of Operational Productivity in NHS providers, where he noted the wide discrepancy in prices between soluble and standard prescriptions. He suggested substantial savings could be made if, where appropriate, standard prednisolone were dispensed rather than soluble. Current prices being paid are more than £1.50 for a soluble tablet compared to £0.015p per standard tablet.
Trusts have reduced usage of soluble prednisolone from 282,777 DDD throughout December 2014 to 79,129 DDD in April 2016 (a fall from £935,000 to £275,000 per month) in the face of further cost increases to £3.48 per day compared to £0.68 per day in April 2011.
Rx-info must therefore congratulate hospital pharmacies for their considerable efforts in carefully managing NHS resources without compromising patient care.