Czech pharma market grows by 4% in 2008
This article was originally published in Scrip
Pharmaceutical sales in the Czech Republic grew by less than 4% to CK46 billion ($2 billion) at ex-manufacturer prices last year, says IMS. Cardiovasculars accounted for around 20% of the total, followed by anticancers. But total sales volume fell by almost 9% to 294 million packages.
The growth rate was the second-lowest in the past eight years and was substantially lower than in 2007 (+11%) when patients stored drugs in anticipation of the introduction of CK30 fees for prescriptions and doctors' visits on January 1st, 2008 (Scrip Online, May 2nd, 2008).
Heated discussions about cancelling these fees continue in the parliament, and they already led to the dismissal of the health minister. There is also split in the society. For example, patients and some pharmacists who began seeing fewer customers after the fees were introduced would welcome their cancellation, but hospital pharmacists would be less happy because the move would reduce their income.
In addition to prescription charges, new regulations for maximum drug prices and reimbursement levels were introduced last year. They were aimed at redistributing funds to encourage the prescription of more modern and more expensive medicines and gave new responsibilities to the state institute for drug control (SUKL).
Maximum drug prices were set based on the three lowest ex-manufacturer prices of identical products in eight reference states (Estonia, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal and Spain) or in other EU member states, if the product was unavailable in the reference countries.
The new pricing system has created problems for local pharmaceutical companies, which mainly make generic drugs. The Czech Association of Pharmaceutical Companies warned that the move could reduce the availability of certain medicines for patients and cause a market contraction.
The association observed that the consumption of cheaper medicines has decreased and that of expensive ones has grown considerably. It welcomed the opportunity for doctors to prescribe costlier medicines, the use of which was previously restricted, but criticised the failure to control prescribing and check whether the prescribing of an expensive medicine was really necessary and could not be substituted by cheaper analogues.
This has resulted in increasing the average drug price on the market, the association said. With regard to the introduction of patient fees, it said that some patients had postponed seeing a doctor and put off medical treatments, sometimes until it was too late.
electronic prescribing
SUKL is planning to implement an electronic prescribing system, possibly by the end of next month, according to the local media. It should enable doctors to write prescriptions on their computers and send them to pharmacies via the internet, passing identification codes to patients for their prescriptions. This should make it unnecessary for patients to see their doctors for regular prescriptions. Responsibility for checking prescriptions will lay with pharmacists, and patients will apparently have to pay CK30 for an electronic prescription in the pharmacy.