Impact of high medicine price on pharmacies concerns PSNC

The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) has raised concerns over the impact that high medicine price rises are having on contractor.

Recently, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has granted the final list of price concessions for December 2022. The latest additions bring the total number of concessionary prices granted for the month of December to 198, surpassing the previous record of 159 granted in September 2022.

PSNC has heard from hundreds of community pharmacy contractors who are paying inflated prices for antibiotics used for the treatment of Strep A and who have rightly been concerned about the lack of certainty around the final reimbursement prices for these medicines.

It added: “We welcomed the involvement of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to look into the pricing of antibiotics. But the number of reports we are getting from contractors about medicines price rises are just not acceptable and this goes far beyond the antibiotic crisis.”

“We are continuing to warn them that this situation is simply not sustainable or acceptable. DHSC needs to investigate why there is consistently such a high number of products unavailable at or below Drug Tariff price and more importantly, pharmacies simply should not be forced to keep funding the gap between the reimbursement and purchase prices for these medicines.”

“The review of the price concessions system is well underway and our meetings with DHSC have been constructive. However, given the current situation, we are pressing officials to expediate this work as a matter of urgency.”