Branded medication often 30 times more expensive than generic equivalent, writes RONAN McGREEVY
HUNDREDS OF millions of euro could be saved by the health service if doctors switched to prescribing generic drugs for elderly people, a prominent geriatrician has claimed. Legislation is being drawn up to tackle the problem, according the Department of Health.
More than 60 per cent of people over the age of 75 are on five drugs or more. Of those, less than 15 per cent are prescribed generic medication by their GPs, according to Prof Rose Anne Kenny.
Prof Kenny, who is the head of the department of medical gerontology at Trinity College Dublin, said it was an issue that needed to be dealt with comprehensively, given the potential savings involved.
Prof Kenny is also the principle investigator in the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (Tilda) project which has profiled the elderly Irish population.
Some of her findings were outlined at an international conference organised by the Centre for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland (Cardi) in Croke Park last week.
She said brand-name drugs, or pharma drugs as they are known, were often 30 times more expensive than their generic equivalent, while incidences of pharma prescribing were higher in Ireland than even in the US.
“If we insisted on generic prescriptions for everybody, we would reduce our pharmacy bill at least by a third and that is a conservative estimate,” she said.
Prof Kenny said she did not understand why so many doctors continued to prescribe brand drugs “but it shouldn’t be happening at a time when it makes a huge difference”.
She also criticised successive governments, including the present one, for not dealing with the issue. She said a solution might involve offering incentives to doctors to prescribe generic drugs.
While in opposition, Minister for Health and Children James Reilly said the State could save €300 million a year by generic prescribing.
Last month, the Economic and Social Research Institute said the introduction of generic drugs provided a “good opportunity” to make substantial savings in pharmaceutical expenditure.
The OECD said per capita spending in 2009 on pharmaceuticals in Ireland was fourth highest among OECD countries after the US, Canada and Greece.
Spending by the Government on pharmaceuticals accounted for 1.7 per cent of GDP that year, amounting to more than €2 billion, substantially higher than the OECD average of 1.2 per cent.
The Department of Health and Children said the heads of a Bill which would tackle the designation and substitution of interchangeable medicines had been approved and were likely to become legislation next year.
In a statement, the department said a lot of high-volume medicines were coming off patent and this would provide an opportunity to use more generic medicines.