Uncertainty over drug pricing casts fear on UK pharma investments

In August, 2007 the Department of Health has announced that it would be re-negotiating the PPRS, even though the current five-year agreement had only been in place for two-and-a-half years and included a 7% across-the-board price cut. The unscheduled renegotiation of PPRS deal has shocked the pharmacy industry as it expected the deal to last to the end of 2009. Industry leaders warned the government that the uncertainty in the UK drug pricing is taking a toll on the investment prospects of the pharmaceutical industry.

Richard Barker, director-general of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry has said that the Office of Health Economics’s new Commission on NHS Outcomes, Performance and Productivity is due to report in March, 2008 on how the NHS can implement the measurement of patient outcomes on a disease-by-disease basis in order to improve its performance, instead of its current ‘incorrect’ method of measuring productivity by dividing activities by costs. The government wants to have the PPRS renegotiations completed by the this year’s summer.