Reduction of the margins of wholesalers and pharmacists, transfer of the dispensing of some drugs from hospitals to pharmacies, incentives for the use of generic drugs, the price of which will also be reduced by 12.5% from June to the end of December 2010. These are some of the measures envisaged by the maneuver approved yesterday by the Council of Ministers, susceptible to some filings before presentation in Parliament.
Since 2011, the intervention has been worth 600 million euros. Among the measures to control expenditure, the redetermination of the shares due to wholesalers and pharmacists on the sale price of the medicine to the public respectively of 3% (from 6.65% to 3.65%) for the former and 30.35% for the latter. The NHS, in proceeding with the payment of the amount due to pharmacies, retains as a further discount, with respect to what is already provided for by current legislation, a share equal to 3.65% on the retail price net of value added tax ( VAT).
Here then is the measure which will have to make it possible to raise 300 million euros for 2010, which will contribute to guaranteeing the additional resources for financing the NHS, equal to 550 million euros for the current year (the other 250 million will come from the savings obtained with the provision as a whole).
It is envisaged that some drugs now administered in hospitals will be transferred to pharmacies, where they will be dispensed, as they are susceptible - reads the text - to outpatient or home use. The Italian Medicines Agency (Aifa) will identify the drugs that will pass from the hospital to the pharmacy within 30 days of the entry into force of the decree that encloses the maneuver, with the aim of reducing hospital pharmaceutical expenditure, currently in galloping growth. Once the list has been published in the Official Gazette, these medicines will be "distributed through territorial pharmaceutical assistance and with charges borne by the related expenditure, for an annual amount of 600 million euros".
The aim is to encourage the use of equivalent medicines. From the comparison between the territorial pharmaceutical expenditure of the individual regions, AIFA will have to define prescribing appropriateness thresholds based on the behavior of the Regions in which more generics are prescribed, i.e. drugs with a lower price, compared to the total of medicines belonging to the same therapeutic category equivalent.
