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Contracts between NHS trusts and medicine manufacturers should mitigate supply issues by giving companies longer lead times to make the medicines and by accounting for their past record on supply performance, the British Generic Manufacturers Association (BGMA) has said.
In a report on ‘Solutions to UK medicines shortages‘, published on 1 October 2024, the BGMA recommended the changes to hospital medicine tendering policies in response to “a sustained period of relatively high numbers” of medicine shortages.
“We track NHS England data monthly and are now seeing twice as many medicines experiencing shortages as there were two years ago,” the report said.
“The vast majority are commonly used generic medicines.”
In March 2024, The Pharmaceutical Journal revealed that the number of medicine supply issues reported by manufacturers to the government increased by almost 70% since 2021, which the BGMA said at the time was “consistent” with its own data.
In response to the growing number of supply issues, the BGMA’s report recommended a series of solutions to “reduce the overall number of shortages”.
These include using “scoring based on supply chain resilience and past supplier performance” when awarding future hospital medicines tenders.
This scoring “should include whether supply issues were reported with adequate notice”, the report added.
Recommendations also include extending lead times to “at least 20 weeks from the award to the contract start date” to reflect that “medicine manufacturing now takes half a year”.
Mark Samuels, chief executive of the BGMA, told The Pharmaceutical Journal that current lead times of 8 to 16 weeks are “inadequate and contributes to shortages”.
“There must be far greater recognition of manufacturing lead times,” he said.
“It takes six months to make many medicines. Consequently, we call for longer lead times of at least 20 weeks from the award to the contract’s start to recognise manufacturing time scales.
“It is only fitting that future contract awards include metrics on resilience and supply performance from previous agreements,” he added.
“While a focus on cost is important, manufacturers who fail to supply without reasonable cause or due notice should be penalised when it comes to contract awards.
“NHS tenders should be weighted accordingly, including manufacturers’ track records on providing adequate and reasonable notice of supply issues.”
In response to the report, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “We know how frustrating and distressing medicine supply issues can be for patients.
“This government inherited ongoing global supply problems that continue to impact medicine availability, and we are working closely with industry, the NHS, manufacturers and other partners in the supply chain to resolve current issues as quickly as possible.”
In July 2024, responses to The Pharmaceutical Journal’s annual Salary and Job Satisfaction Survey revealed that 68% of pharmacists felt that shortages have put patients at risk in the previous six months.
