Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme

(asked on 28th January 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how his Department plans to measure the effect of the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme on access to medicines.


Answered by
George Freeman Portrait
George Freeman
This question was answered on 2nd February 2015

In England, Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS) payments are taken into account in the allocations to NHS England through the Mandate. All the payments will go back into spending on improving patients’ health and care.

Growth of net sales from products covered by the PPRS in the first nine months of 2014 compared to 2013 was 5.93%. This was higher than the agreed forecast growth of 3.87% and shows that patients are benefitting from greater access to branded medicines. Most companies have enjoyed growth in sales in 2014, with over 40% of companies having double-digit growth rates.

The Department, NHS England, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry have worked together to develop the NICE Technology Appraisals in the NHS in England, Innovation Scorecard, Experimental statistics to provide a single source of information on access to NICE-approved medicines. The Health and Social Care Information Centre published the latest Innovation Scorecard on 20 January 2015 and it is available at:

www.hscic.gov.uk/searchcatalogue?productid=16886&topics=0%2fPrescribing&sort=Relevance&size=10&page=1#top

The report includes some examples of medicines use in comparison with NICE estimates of expected use and includes an interactive spreadsheet that allows users to compare variations in medicines usage between organisations and over time, and a mapping visualisation tool showing medicines use by NHS England area team.

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