Pharmaceutical expenditure for direct purchases, or hospital expenditure, in 2022 will go beyond the planned ceiling for 
law with an expected deficit of between 2.2 and 2.3 billion euros, an increase of about 10% compared to the previous year.
About half of the amount, ie 1.10 -1.15 billion, will have to be paid off by pharmaceutical companies. The estimate is from IQVIA, the provider of healthcare and pharmaceutical data and analytics. The expenditure ceiling for the direct purchase of medicines for 2022 should be around 9.6 billion euros, or 7.8% of the National Health Fund (Fsn).
However, spending on direct purchases is forecast to be around €11.8-11.9 billion (up by around 5% compared to 2021). The breakthrough will therefore increase by around 10% compared to 2021, despite the 2 billion increase in the Fsn and the increase in the percentage of the Fund dedicated to direct pharmaceutical expenditure, which went from 7.65% to 7.8%.
Innovative and innovative oncological drugs are excluded from this calculation which, starting this year, form part of a single separate fund of 1.1 billion euros, which sees an increase of 100 million euros (from 500+500 million to 1. 1 billion) and no overrun is envisaged in this case.
Finally, the subsidized expenditure (for drugs on NHS prescription) is expected to grow slightly (between 0.5% and 1.5%), reaching between 7.9 and 8 billion.
Sergio Liberatore, managing director of IQVIA Italia “In recent years, the pressing need to guarantee the economic sustainability of the national health service has led to the implementation of a series of interventions which penalize the pharmaceutical industry in Italy. In fact, companies have to repay, with the payback system, half of the NHS drug deficit. The remainder is paid by the individual Regions on the basis of their exceeding the assigned budget". Liberatore continues: “Despite the increase decided in the 2021 Budget Law, lPharmaceutical spending remains under-funded. It is important that this issue once again become a political priority. It is improper to set such a low ceiling on pharmaceutical expenditure when we know that it will be breached by more than two billion euros”. (Taken from Daily health of May 31, 2022)
Cosmofarma – Iqvia research on pharmaceutical expenditure in the last 12 months presented
Iqvia, first quarter 2022, growing pharmacy revenues (+7.2%), online is flying
