DVSV invited to the SV Forum 2024 – Focus on pharmaceutical supply in Austria and Europe
Vienna (OTS) – Many factors in pharmaceutical production are also relevant to location policy. A seamless and high-quality supply of pharmaceuticals is not only in the interests of the insured, it is also an essential factor in location policy. Against the background of the close interrelationship between these two areas, the social insurance system devoted itself to the topic of “Securing the supply of pharmaceuticals” on Tuesday as part of the SV Forum 2024. Representatives from the healthcare industry and politics discussed with business representatives in the umbrella association of social insurance providers (DVSV) the mutual influence of securing locations and healthcare on each other. The main topic of discussion was what is needed to keep pharmaceutical production in Austria and reduce dependence outside Europe.
“Today, almost 7,700 drugs are listed in the EKO alone and the future lies in precision medicine. Personalized medicine, which is being developed by ‘The Pill Just for Me’, has significantly shifted the pharmaceutical industry’s decades-long focus away from blockbusters. This is not only an incredible advance, but also challenges the system in a new way,” explains Peter Lehner, Chairman of the Conference of Social Insurance Institutions at the opening of the SV Forum.
Drug availability is a part of location policy
The concentration and outsourcing of production sites, parallel imports and exports and external factors influence the availability of medicines. Due to the outsourcing of production sites and the fragmentation of supply chains, there is no comprehensive protection against delivery difficulties and bottlenecks in pharmaceutical production either. According to social insurance surveys, the proportion of medicine packages that could not be delivered was 7.5 percent in May 2024. Delivery bottlenecks are not a specifically Austrian problem, but a product of international cooperation and global competition.
At the same time, only very few of the unavailable products are classified as triggers for a possible supply shortage. In addition, supply shortages in the pharmaceutical sector rarely occur in Austria due to the density of generics on offer and the availability of therapeutic alternatives. 76 percent of the drugs listed in the reimbursement code and unavailable on the market due to delivery problems can be completely replaced by generics. For the remaining 24 percent, alternatives that are not very significant for the insured can be offered, for example by making slight adjustments to the strength of the active ingredient (including monthly packs instead of small packs or prescribing twice the amount with half the strength of the active ingredient).
Despite this good supply density in Austria, supply bottlenecks in the pharmaceutical sector are undesirable from a medical and health policy perspective as well as from an economic perspective and should be avoided at best. In this regard, this year’s SV Forum discussed which national measures have been taken and are still planned in Austria to ensure the supply and production of pharmaceuticals, what is being pushed at the European level and what expectations there are on the health and economic policy side. The European level was represented on site by representatives of the new EU authority HERA, which was founded for crisis prevention and response, including for delivery difficulties, and by the Directorate-General for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW) of the European Commission.
Social insurance for security of supply
At the national level, the social insurance system is committed to a wide range of measures to ensure that insured persons are provided with as complete a supply of medicines as possible. For example, the umbrella organization regularly exchanges data with the Federal Office for Safety in Health Care (BASG) on restrictions on the ability to sell medicines. This creates transparency and shows the need for import and export control. The social insurance system also covers the costs of importing therapeutically necessary medicines. Another social insurance measure is the creation of an interface to the BASG register so that doctors can receive information about whether a medicine is available or not via their practice software at the time of prescription. This availability data is also shown in the “Eko2go” app. The social insurance system thus shows products that cannot be delivered on a daily basis and thus supports the entire healthcare location with planning security.
Inquiries & Contact:
Umbrella association of social insurance institutions
01 711 32-1120
presse@sozialversicherung.at
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