NHS: Drugs

(asked on 29th November 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure value for money on pharmaceutical procurement.


Answered by
Steve Brine Portrait
Steve Brine
This question was answered on 7th December 2017

For unbranded generics the Government relies on completion to keep prices down which generally works well and has led to low prices of these medicines. We alert the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) when we believe that competition does not work. In the case of liothyronine, the CMA is currently investigating Concordia’s potential abuse of its dominant position to overcharge the National Health Service for liothyronine.

In primary care community pharmacies are incentivised to source products at the lowest possible cost by allowing them to retain the medicines margin (the difference between what the NHS reimburses a pharmacy for a product and how much the pharmacy purchases it for) up to £800 million in England. In secondary care, competitive tenders ensure value-for-money to the NHS.

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