Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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704. To ask the Minister for Health the steps he will take to ensure greater use in prescribing generic and biosimilar medicines; the estimated extra saving envisaged next year by the increased use; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28568/20]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The Department of Health is fully supportive of domestic policies that maximise efficiency in our medicines usage. The HSE is actively engaged in implementing effective policy levers across a number of domains and under several initiatives, including programmes under the Acute Hospitals Drugs Management Programme (AHDMP), the Medicines Management Programme (MMP), and within the Primary Care Eligibility & Reimbursement Service (PCERS).

Our commitment to generic medicines was demonstrated in the Health (Pricing and Supply of Medical Goods) Act 2013 whereby the Act provided for the introduction of a system of generic substitution and reference pricing. The Act permits pharmacists to substitute medicines prescribed, provided they have been designated as safely interchangeable by the Health Products Regulatory Authority. Reference pricing involves the setting of a common reimbursement price, or reference price, for a group of interchangeable medicines, and this is the price that the HSE will reimburse to pharmacies for all medicines in this group, regardless of the individual medicines’ price.

In terms of biosimilar medicines, the HSE's Acute Hospitals Drugs Management Programme (AHDMP) has a biosimilar strategy in place since 2017. This is making considerable progress using a collaborative to bring about changes in prescribing practice.

In addition, the HSE Medicines Management Programme completed an evaluation process in 2019 for the identification of the best-value biological (BVB) medicines for TNF-α inhibitors under the High-Tech Drug arrangements.

In June 2019, the HSE introduced a system of gain-share to encourage the prescribing of the BVB medicines which has been largely successful in increasing uptake of these medicines. As of September 2020, at least €42.5m of biosimilar savings are expected to be delivered in 2020.

In relation to your specific data requests, I have asked the HSE to respond to you directly as they have responsibility for this area.