British prices would cut drugs bill by €50m

COST OF MEDICINES:THE HEALTH Service Executive's bills for medicines would save the State at least €50 million this year if it were able to buy the drugs for the price obtained by the National Health Service in Britain.

Information supplied by the HSE to the Dáil’s public spending watchdog, the Committee of Public Accounts, discloses that the health service continues to pay more than the NHS for the same medicines.

“It has been estimated that if the prices of both on- and off-patent medicines were reduced to UK equivalent prices, a saving of €50 million would result,” the HSE says in documents submitted to the committee.

The information is contained in a series of written answers following the appearance of senior HSE executives before the committee earlier this year. The overall cost of medicines to the State is close to €2 billion per annum.

The note also concedes that a target to cut spending on drugs by €100 million this year will not be realised because of a breakdown in talks and delays in getting enabling legislation through the Oireachtas.

Indeed, it suggests that the drugs bill could be larger than provided for at the beginning of the year, because of the unplanned-for introduction of expensive new drugs.

“The [reduction] was dependent upon agreement with the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association among others together with the enactment of the requisite legislation by Government,” it says.

“These savings have not yet been delivered as negotiations to date have failed to achieve the requisite quantum of savings.

“The National Service Plan did not provide additional funding for the introduction of new drugs during 2012. The decision to introduce new drugs creates an additional cost pressure.”

Elsewhere, the document discloses that 31 consultant doctors were beneficiaries of the historical rest days arrangement during 2011. This allows consultants to take off the final year of work, on full pay, to compensate for extra days worked in earlier years. The doctors can also choose to be their own locums for that year. Nine of the doctors were paid salaries in excess of €150,000, while some 11 were paid less than €50,000.

The HSE also supplied overall figures for the cost of paying increments to staff between 2010 and 2012. The cost has fallen from almost €50 million in 2010 to just over €40 million this year. This was due to a drop of almost 20 per cent in staff numbers.

The documentation also discloses that allowances in excess of €10,000 were paid to 9,500 staff as recently as 2010. However, the HSE said that because of the different financial systems in operation in the HSE, it was impossible to clarify the reason these allowances were paid.