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The Government has said it wants to expand the scope of its data collection on medicines in a series of proposals it believes will help mitigate shortages and improve pharmacies’ reimbursement for dispensing drugs.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) this week set out plans to beef up information regulations by adding more medicines to the Drug Tariff and setting a reimbursement price for a greater number of products using suppliers’ sales and volume data.

The DHSC said information underpinning reimbursement prices should be provided more regularly on a quarterly basis “to build up a picture of the sales and volume over time”.

The DHSC said that would “ensure reimbursement arrangements are more reflective of market conditions and therefore fairer reimbursement for dispensing contractors”.

It said it will “routinely” collect data from products in the new Drug Tariff classification Category H which will be introduced next month. The DHSC said the category will contain Category C products “where there is competition between suppliers, marketed both as brands and generics”.

Data for Category H products, the DHSC said, will be collected quarterly and used to set a quarterly reimbursement price which will “remove the need to seek information through the ad hoc route” it currently uses, “making this more efficient for both DHSC and industry”.

Hub pharmacies subject to same data reporting as wholesalers

The consultation, which seeks the views of stakeholders in the pharmaceutical supply chain, also contains a plan to introduce provisions requiring hub pharmacies to “be subject to the same data reporting requirements as wholesalers, given their position and role in the medicines supply chain”.

Insisting product data returns from hubs will inform reimbursement prices, the DHSC said: “Currently, schedule 1 of the information regulations defines a medicines wholesaler as a ‘person who holds a wholesale dealer’s licence’. Since hubs are pharmacies, they will not be required to hold a wholesale dealer’s licence.

“Consequently, DHSC is seeking to expand or amend this definition so that it can adequately include hubs within its scope and thereby subject hubs to wholesaler record-keeping and reporting obligations.”

The DHSC is also consulting on a proposal to require suppliers and manufacturers to notify it, through the NHS Business Services Authority, about new products classified as health service medicines and prescribed in primary care and keep the DHSC notified if changes are made to the product including its price and pack size.

“(The) proposals should improve suppliers’ compliance to the regulations by enabling DHSC to update the compliance regime, ultimately supporting better patient access to medicines both of which represent taxpayer value for money,” the DHSC said.