Five regions come together to buy medicines. Savings of 31 million euros

Fedaisf editorial staff

October 29, 2018

HEALTHCARE For the first time, an agreement between five Italian regions has made it possible to launch a supra-regional tender for the supply of medicines and to obtain substantial savings on the price of medicines, freeing up resources to be reinvested in the national health service.

In recent days, Scr, the purchasing company of the Piedmont Region, in fact awarded the tender for the supply of adalimumab, a biological drug used for diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis and Crohn's disease. In the call for tenders, four other regions joined Piedmont – Lazio, Sardinia, Valle d'Aosta and Veneto – for a total of about 17 million interested people, almost a third of the entire Italian population.

The announcement of a tender for the supply, which took place simultaneously with the expiry of the patent of the "originating" drug and the placing on the market of the biosimilar, has allowed a reduction of 65% in the cost incurred by the regions and savings of over 31 million euros .

“This is a historic fact, it is the first time in Italy that several regions have agreed to carry out a tender of such proportions, and it is also proof that there is still a lot of room for pharmaceuticals to obtain resources to reinvest in the health system – underlines the Councilor for Health of the Piedmont Region Antonio Saitta, coordinator of the Health Commission of the Conference of Regions -. It is an experience that we have carried forward over the years as Giunta Chiamparino and which we are now making available to all the Regions: let's unite to make common tenders"

There are 111,929 vials put up for tender: the unit amount has dropped from the 424.32 euros initially paid to the 298 euros of the starting price, down to the 146.72 euros of the actual award price, thanks to the further reduction that took place. The cost for the regions has thus dropped from the 47.5 million euros spent before the tender to the current 16.4 million euros.

Last year the commissioner Saitta he had written to the regional health councilors, proposing the launch of single tenders for the supply of medicines to encourage competition and obtain substantial cost reductions. The tender that has just ended is the first result of this form of collaboration.

“Today I reinforce the proposal I made last year to my colleagues – Saitta reiterates -. I am sure that, on the basis of the results obtained, more and more agreements can be reached in this sense between the regional client companies, also in view of the forthcoming tenders for the supply of medicines”.

In the the next few months should indeed be new biosimilar drugs of bevacizumab and teraparatide have been placed on the market, medicines for which the Regions spend respectively 155 and 85.4 million euros a year at a national level.

Gazzetta d’Alba – 29 ottobre 2018