Russian & CEE Pharma Market Access
From 11th-12th March 2013, NextLevel Pharma organised Russian & CEE Pharma Market Access Summit in Vienna, Austria. The main conference topics were challenges in communicating value for high-cost medicines in regional health systems.
Lecturers from different health and pharmaceutical sectors gave their perspective from the point of view of government institutions, payers, drug producers, patient organisations and independent pharmaceutical professionals.
It was clearly presented how political and economical changes put a great pressure on lowering health system cost, while at the same time facing higher medical service and drug usage due to aging of population. With significantly more occupational challenges, health care professionals are demanding higher salaries in many eastern European countries and ministries are often taking short term steps - reducing the prices of medicines as soon as possible.
Market access managers from pharmaceutical industry explained how multinational companies are adapting to constantly changing pricing systems in CEE & Russian region. Reimbursement list prices are mostly formed based on reference countries, with high risk of price erosion chain reaction.
In order to reduce costs, countries in the region are implementing hospital and national tenders, payback mechanisms and off-label prescription control.
Drug expense for payer is lowered further by simplifying generics reimbursement under controlled price reduction and additionally by increasing patient copayment.
One of the biggest challenges for patient organisations and the industry is presenting long term benefit of innovative therapy in times when national budgets suffer from reduced revenues.
Russian & CEE Pharma Market Access Summit gave the insight to current market access changes in the region and presented how health care systems adapt to provide the best patient care with limited resources.