PSNC
The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) has said supply and price issues with generic drugs are continuing to put “enormous and unreasonable pressure on community pharmacy contractors” as the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) announced its final price concessions for April 2018.
The DHSC has granted price concessions for 47 drugs this April, compared with 68 in March.
Mike Dent, director of pharmacy funding at the PSNC, said: “We are disappointed that once again, this month, the DHSC has imposed prices on a number of lines at lower levels than the PSNC had sought.
“Whilst the DHSC trials the use of manufacturer prices rather than wholesaler prices to inform its decision making, the PSNC continues to press the need for a fair system to be implemented, the principles of which were agreed by the committee and put to the DHSC earlier this year.”
The government is currently trialling a new approach to setting price concessions that is more responsive to price rises and will not leave pharmacies out of pocket.
The PSNC has said the DHSC was working on a system that gathers “timely data” from manufacturers on the price of generics.
