Drug prices are “spiralling” and some common medicines now cost several times more than they did just months ago, the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has warned.
Appearing on BBC Radio 4 last week to discuss the drug supply issues affecting pharmacies, NPA chair Olivier Picard stressed that the sector is “dealing with a broken system”.
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And in a LinkedIn post shared afterwards, Picard said “medicine costs are spiralling and supply is becoming harder to guarantee”.
He noted that his pharmacies and the NPA’s 6,000 members have seen “some commonly prescribed medicines cost 14 to 15 times more than they did at the start of the year”.
“In many cases, reimbursement simply isn’t keeping up, leaving pharmacies to absorb the difference just to ensure patients don’t go without,” he added.
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And Picard said that “while there are no immediate shortages linked” to the war in the Middle East, manufacturers have warned that “ongoing disruption could make supply issues inevitable”.
“This isn’t temporary,” he warned. “It’s a system under strain and it’s starting to show.”
Prices soar
The NPA shared with C+D several examples of drug prices that have increased dramatically since the start of this year.
It said the cost of Bisoprolol 1.25mg tablets has shot up from 36p on February 5 to £3.95 on April 22 - an increase of almost 1000%.
The loss to English pharmacies dispensing the drug “per unit after NHS reimbursement” is £1.96, it added, resulting in an overall loss of “£5.17m” per month.
The body also highlighted that the price of Carvedilol 25mg tablets, which cost 60p on February 6, has risen to £3.89 as of April 22.
“Government must step in”
Picard told C+D that medicine shortages “have already become commonplace in recent years, regardless of the war in the Middle East”, and the NPA is “concerned by anything that may exacerbate an already challenging situation”.
Picard said the government “must step in to help pharmacies, who are at the sharp end of something that is beyond their control”.
“Pharmacies should not have to subsidise the NHS’s medicines bill,” he added. “The government should fully cover these cost increases for pharmacies, as well as mitigate the impact of any potential shortage of medicines for patients.”
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It comes after the Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) said the Department of Health and Social Care’s response to a House of Lords inquiry into medicines security “fails to address the main challenge” facing the supply of drugs in primary care.
The CCA’s chief executive Malcolm Harrison said the response “does provide some solutions for dealing with shortages in primary care once they have occurred” but “does not address how to build longer-term resilience in the supply chain, to prevent shortages in the first place”.
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And it follows Labour MP Sadik Al-Hassan calling on the government to “sustain and strengthen” community pharmacy in order to tackle medicine supply issues.
Speaking at a House of Commons reception hosted by the Medicines Supply Resilience Group and the CCA, Al-Hassan added that shortages have “moved from being isolated incidents to a chronic structural challenge for the NHS and for pharmacy”.
