What happens when the department of health (DHSC) agree an increase in the reimbursement price of a brand (VPAS or VPAG)? How does this affect parallel imports?
Charles Joynson, WaveData MD, looked at four products which had both had increases in reimbursement and sufficient number of parallel import market prices in the last five years to be worth analysing.
In the charts below the reimbursement price is shown in blue, the average parallel import price in red, and the number of market offers (price lists) in green.
By and large when the reimbursement price increases, the average PI price increases as well. This doesn’t apply in every month but it covers the majority of instances. Because we don’t have the parallel import volume, we’ve used the data count which is the number of PI prices we’ve seen in the price lists sent to pharmacies and dispensing doctors. Of the four products, one showed an increase, two decreases and the last a steady state in PI availability.
The difference between availability increases and declines is the price of the brand. The product which saw an increase in availability was significantly more expensive (about £140) than the other three which were each less than £20.
