Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 23 April 2015
Public Accounts Committee
2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 39 - Health Service Executive
Chapter 14 - Procurement by the Health Service Executive
Health Service Executive Financial Statements 2013
10:00 am
Mr. Tony O'Brien:
That would not be consistent with the current agreements in place or our current implementation of the 2013 legislation. I do not think I referenced bulk buying and I am not sure where that came from. When I referred to volume, I simply said - I may need to clarify - that when we were beginning the process of reference pricing, we started with the most prescribed and highest cost items in order that as we gained the benefit of reference pricing, it was related to those which had the greatest financial benefit. However, we do not bulk buy as such. We have national agreements on pricing and the way medicines are prescribed is obviously not in a bulk buying context but in the context of individual patients and prescribers.
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