UK Generic Pharmaceutical Shortages
Authors: Greg Mills, Veerle van Leemput
Abstract: This R-Shiny application was developed to quantify the financial impact of generic pharmaceutical shortages in the United Kingdom. For the top 100 active ingredients you can see the additional spending from 2015 onwards.
Full Description: This R-Shiny application was developed to quantify the financial impact of generic pharmaceutical shortages in the United Kingdom. Generic pharmaceutical shortages have a large impact on the National Health Service (NHS) finances. During a shortage event the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) issue an amendment to the original reimbursement price (or drug tariff price), in what is known as the concessionary price. Each month, an average of 24 active ingredients experience a supply shortage, putting patient's health at risk and also adding to the financial burden of the National Health Service (NHS).
During a supply shortage event, the NHS reimburse pharmacies at a higher rate for the drug, aiming to compensate the pharmacies for their additional spending on the higher-priced branded pharmaceutical alternatives.
We built a model in R which generates an estimation of the NHS spending had there not been a supply shortage at all and compared this against the actual spending amount. The results are staggering, since 2015 the top 100 active ingredients alone have contributed to £1.7 billion (USD2.4 billion) additional spending. The full amount including all active ingredients is over £2.5 billion (USD3.5 billion). This amount continues to compound over time because the drug prices remain elevated for months and often years after the shortage event.
By developing this application we want to raise awareness of the impact of shortage events in the pharmaceutical supply chain. And with the knowledge we gather we can actively act upon preventing these situations by predicting shortage events and mitigate the financial impact.
Keywords: healthcare, pharma, shortages, medicine, highcharter, bs4Dash
Shiny app: https://analytichealth.shinyapps.io/pharmaceutical-shortages/
Repo: GitHub - analytic-health/pharmaceutical-shortages: Shiny app displaying financial impact of generic pharmaceutical shortages in the United Kingdom.
RStudio Cloud: Posit Cloud
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