Pharmacies underpaid ‘£1 a pill’ for common Parkinson’s drug

A new analysis has revealed that NHS underfunding has left pharmacies facing “thousands of pounds” of losses every month for common prescription medicines including Parkinson’s drugs, antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications.

Two pound coins surrounded by tablets and capsules
NPA: “It is nothing short of a national scandal" • Source: Shutterstock

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) today (October 16) revealed the extent to which “government funding falls way short of the price local pharmacies have to pay for many common medicines”, leaving them facing “losing thousands of pounds a month”.

The membership body conducted a “snapshot” analysis of the difference between wholesale medicine costs from “two major wholesalers” and NHS funding rates in the September price concessions for 15 “commonly dispensed” drugs on October 7, it said.

In “the worst case the NPA uncovered”, it found that pharmacies dispensing Amantadine – a drug used to treat the symptoms of Parkinson’s – are being underpaid by more than £75 a pack for the medication.

Read more: ‘Unacceptable’ lack of April concessions ‘likely’ due to DH changes

According to the NPA, the government pays £18.06 for a 56-tablet pack of Amantadine but the market cost of the drug is five times more at £94.05 a pack.

This means that a pharmacy would lose £75.99 per pack, which is “the equivalent of more than £1 per tablet”, it said.

Other medicines analysed by the NPA included common antidepressant Escitalopram, anti-anxiety medication Lorazepam and Etoricoxib, an anti-inflammatory drug used to treat conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis.

Read more: ‘Deep distress’: Almost two-third of pharmacies losing money warns CPE

Pharmacies are paid just £1.27 to dispense a pack of Escitalopram, yet they must pay £9.08 to purchase the drug from suppliers, it said.

This is over five times the amount pharmacies are reimbursed by the government, meaning they would lose almost £8 for every pack they dispense to a patient, it added.

And it said that while Etoricoxib costs pharmacies £19.47 per pack from a supplier, they only receive £6.75 from the NHS to dispense the medication – so they lose £12.72 per pack.

“National scandal”

NPA chief executive Paul Rees said that “it is nothing short of a national scandal that pharmacies have to dig deep into their own pockets just to cover the cost of basic medicines that they dispense to patients in need of treatment”.

“No other health professional would be asked to subsidise a key NHS service,” he added.

Read more: The NPA ballot – are you feeling solidarity? Or otherwise?

The NPA also highlighted that in some cases, NHS funding “only covers one pound in five of the price pharmacies have to pay for medicines”, with “chronic underfunding…leading to intolerable financial pressure on pharmacies”.

“The system for funding the medicines upon which millions of patients rely is utterly broken,” Rees said.

He called on the government to halt pharmacy closures by delivering a “new deal” to “end the terrible toll of closures and cuts to services.”

Chronic underfunding

But pharmacists’ dissatisfaction with NHS funding rates is not a new phenomenon.

In April, Community Pharmacy England (CPE) blamed the government’s “untested” changes to the drug tariff in April for a lack of price concessions, which left pharmacists wondering whether the government expects “contractors to make a loss”.

Read more:Negotiator slams government for imposing ‘untested’ concession changes

These changes were “imposed by the government without [the negotiator’s] agreement” and were opposed by CPE “in the strongest terms”, it said at the time.

The NPA’s prescription price analysis comes as it is leading members into a ballot for the first time in history to vote on whether to take collective work to rule measures in protest against the sector funding crisis.

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