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Impact of recent reforms to encourage the prescribing of generic statins

European countries are addressing resource concerns through a variety of measures. The study aim is to assess the impact of various initiatives on ambulatory care utilisation and expenditure of statins (ATC group C10AA) across Europe as a basis for proposing additional reforms. Statins is a high volume prescribing area with generics, originators and single sourced products. Dispensed prescriptions, excluding hospital and OTC, were captured from 2001 to 2007 where possible and converted into DDDs and DDD/TID among ambulatory care patients across Europe. Health authorities provided the data. Reimbursed expenditure was computed and converted to €s. Key drivers of change were analysed. Statin utilisation increased (Figure 1) although significant differences. Reasons included only recent reimbursement and high co-payment. Simvastatin and atorvastatin dominated with high utilisation of generics in some (Figure 2) helped by low costs, prescribing restrictions including prior authorisation for atorvastatin, as well as benchmarking and quality targets linked with financial incentives. Falling expenditure/ DDD helped by falling expenditure DDD/ generic simvastatin (Figure 3) led to lower rates of increase in growth in expenditure or actual falls. Substantial variation in generic costs with substitution and transparent pricing most successful.

Impact of recent reforms to encourage the prescribing of generic statins

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