There has been a lot of discussion about Category H at recent events, online and on socials.
Charles Joynson, WaveData MD, poses the question; ‘Will it cut another group of generics to the bone and seriously damage pharmacy and supplier profitability? Or will it increase profitability for the supply chain?’
WaveData have average market prices for tens of thousands of products going back over 25 years, but for this deep dive we used the British Pharmaceutical Pricing Index, which covers the last 10 years and should be sufficient.
We could have calculated the profitability of buying just a single pack of each of the 11 medicines added to Category H in March this year. But, we thought it would be more interesting to weight it according to the actual prescribing volume in 2025. This would give us a consistent idea of long-term profitability if the monthly prescribed volume had remained the same.
The long-term picture shows gradually increasing profitability till spring 2022 when it declined dramatically. It appears that Doxazosin MR Tabs 4mg 28 was the primary driver for this erratic behaviour, due to its appearance and disappearance from price lists during this period. It was granted concessions in 2023, so it may have suffered shortages through 2022 and 2023. Since then Category H product profitability has been recovering.
The introduction of the new Category H Drug Tariff prices in March 2026, and the earliest hints at March market pricing, suggest the new Category has not yet made much of a difference. However, this is very early days, more data will appear and more products are bound to be added and they may have a much greater effect on profitability in the long-term.