Pharmaceutical expenditure which continues to fall in the first few months of 2014, but which marks a progressive slowdown during the quarter, with a slightly higher volume of prescriptions prescribed and medicines dispensed under the NHS (+0.6%) compared to the same period of 2013. And, at the local level, the decline is recorded in most of the regions, while the two autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano, Campania and Puglia show an opposite trend. These are the main results of the elaboration of the data on the approved pharmaceutical expenditure of the first quarter of 2014 published by Federfarma. Compared with the same period of 2013, in fact, a drop of 2.9% was recorded, with a rate that gradually decreased over the first three months, going from -3.5% in January to -2. 8% in February up to -2.4% in March. Substantially unchanged, with a slight increase of + 0.6%, compared to the first quarter of 2013, both prescriptions prescribed and the volume of medicines dispensed, which amounted to a total of 158 million in the first case - for an average of 2. 6 prescriptions per citizen - and in the second to over 291 million - equal to 4.9 packages dispensed per citizen, while the decline in the average value of prescriptions continued (-3.4%), with a drop in the average price of medicines prescribed in NHS regime decreased in the last 5 years by -21.6%. Analyzing the situation at the regional level, the increase, as already noted, is Campania, Trento and Bolzano, which have a rate between approximately 1.5% and 2%, and Puglia, while the other regions show expenditure of the opposite sign, with Sicily (-7.9%), Umbria (-6.7%) and Emilia Romagna (-6.3%) at the top of the ranking. Also noteworthy is the increase in sharing paid by citizens, with an incidence on the gross agreed expenditure that reaches 13.2% in March, against 12.4% in the same month of 2013. In general, «in the first quarter citizens they paid over 374 million co-payments on medicines, of which over 62% (Aifa data) due to the difference between the price of the branded drug and the price of the less expensive equivalent drug, charged to the citizens".
Frances Giani
Wednesday, June 11, 2014 – Pharmacist33
Spending data January March 2014 http://www.federfarma.it/Spesa-e-consumi-farmaceutici-SSN.aspx
