By Redaction the Money – Tuesday 27 November 2012
Drug chaos generics: after the introduction of the new rules established by the Spending Review, 30 per cent of prescriptions are returned to the sender. According to a Merqurio survey, the majority of doctors do not like the new prescribing rules.
So much confusion in the pharmacy and in the doctor's office: all the fault of the Spendig-review.
According to the survey by the Merqurio Study Center in Naples, 33.3% of doctors had their prescription returned to the sender. The problem? The distinction, sometimes still a little difficult for white coats, between branded drugs and non-branded ones.
Interpretive confusion
“What we feared is happening – comments the deputy secretary for the Campania region of the Italian doctors union (Smi), Salvatore Marotta – we have repeatedly denounced that this new provision, among the many distortions, would lead to enormous confusion. So it was and now the doctors are paying the consequences every day".
The survey was conducted by Merquirio via telephone and email, from 12 to 19 November, on a sample of 878 doctors.
If 34.7 percent did not encounter any problems, 22.8 percent had them at the beginning and 33 percent are still having several headaches.
Difficult provisions
The reason, probably, will also be the tendency of white coats not to like these new provisions too much. In fact, between generic and branded drugs, the Italian doctor continues to choose the designer one and the percentages are also on the rise. 58.5 percent of doctors believe that designer drugs are more effective than generics against 44 percent in recent months.
On the other hand, 23.3 per cent affirm that there are no differences between the two products, a sharp drop compared to the 42 per cent in July. But it's not just a matter of personal preference. According to 26.4 per cent of doctors, the majority of their clients complain of the ineffectiveness of the equivalent compared to the branded drug. To these
