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Summary of main points
1. Prescription charges
and length of repeat prescriptions for patients with
long-term medication dependencies are two issues that
must be reformed in tandem, because of inevitable
concerns over the potential for increased medicines
wastage where medication is a “free good” and because
restricting patients to just 28-days’ supply at a time
unnecessarily and artificially limits the medical
benefit.
2. The current main
mechanism for wastage prevention, 28-day rationing, is
inefficient when applied to drugs with a stable,
long-term dependency. It is costing the NHS hundreds of
millions of pounds in additional expenditure in pharmacy
costs.
3. Our estimates suggest
it would be possible to phase out prescription charges
for the entire UK population on a cost-neutral basis,
through a one-third reduction of the current spending on
pharmacy dispensing fees and associated charges. The
prescription charge brings in around £450 million pounds
in revenue, which is about one-third of the £1.36
billion spent on pharmacy costs. A cost-neutral phasing
out of the prescription charge could be achieved by
extending the length of repeat prescriptions for
patients with a stable, long-term medication dependency
from the current 28 days to between three and six
months, as appropriate. |
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