UK NAO calls for curb on Rx drug wastage

"Unused and wasted drugs" cost the UK's National Health Service at least L100.0 million ($195.9 million) a year, according to Edward Leigh, a Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts, discussing the findings of a new report from the National Audit Office. This also found that the pharmaceutical industry spends some L850.0 million a year on marketing its products to general practitioners.

Among the suggestions in the NAO report, which was released as this issue of the Marketletter was going to press and will be fully reported next week, it proposed, among other moves, that the price of drugs be published on the packaging, in order to make patients more aware of their costs to avoid wastage, and that GPs be encouraged to prescribe more generic copy drugs instead of the more expensive branded products. This, it said, could save L200.0 million a year, without compromising clinical outcomes, noting that prescription medicines cost the NHS L8.2 billion in 2006, over double that of 1996.