‘Preferred drugs’ can save patients €200 a year

Savings of around €200 a year can be made by private patients on the cost of anti-depressants if GPs prescribe a cheaper but equally effective drug preferred by the HSE, it emerged yesterday.

The two drugs Citalopram (Celexa) and Venlafaxine (Effexoror/Efexor) were yesterday included in the HSE’s medicines management programme (MMP).

Preferred drugs are medicines that the MMP is recommending as the drugs of “first choice” to prescribers.

To date, the programme has identified six preferred drugs and pointed out that savings of €19.5m a year could be achieved by prescribers by changing prescribing patterns for just new patients.

The head of the programme, Michael Barry, said the HSE drugs budget exceeded €1.8bn last year under the community drugs scheme.

“We estimated the total drug expenditure would be in the region of €3bn for 2013 rather than the €1.8bn, and it does show a degree of success in what we are doing,” said Prof Barry.

He said GPs had asked the administrators of the programme to look at medications to treat depression and found that the average cost for a month’s supply could be reduced from €29 to €13.

He pointed out that, at any one time, 150,000 patients were prescribed the medications, which cost over €55m each year.

The programme is currently reviewing respiratory medicines and urology products.

Each review takes around three months to complete.

Prof Barry said the HSE established the drugs safety and efficacy before price was considered.