Hospitals hit by soaring bill for costly medicines

Published on Thursday 16 April 2009 00:31

EXPENSIVE medicines are putting hospital budgets under pressure, public spending watchdogs said today.

Scotland's acute hospitals spent 222 million on drugs for patients in 2007-8 – 76 per cent more than the total bill of 126 million in 2002-3. Spending on medicines has increased more than overall hospital expenditure, which went up by 69 per cent over the same period.

Audit Scotland said in a report that most patients were given medicines when they were treated in hospital, and the average cost per patient for this was about 70 in 2007-8.

But medicines needed to be used "safely, appropriately and in a cost-effective way to maximise their benefit", the report said. Medicines account for about 6 per cent of running costs for acute hospitals, but expensive medicines "are a particular pressure on hospital budgets".

A number of costly drugs contribute to the high level of spending on hospital medicines. Audit Scotland looked at spending on four, and said the bill for these in 2007-8 was 25 million.

However, its report pointed out that the Scottish Medicines Consortium was providing health boards with better information on the anticipated impact new medicines would have on budgets, although a centralised record of what each patient had been prescribed had not developed quickly enough.

The report recommended that the Scottish Government worked with NHS boards to ensure that such a system is implemented across all boards "as soon as possible".