Drugs 'stretch hospital budgets'

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Hospital budgets are being stretched by the cost of expensive medicines, Scotland's public spending watchdog has warned.

Audit Scotland said in a report that the country's acute hospitals spent £222m on drugs for patients in 2007-08.

This represented a 76% increase in the total bill of £126m five years earlier.

The watchdog said its research found that an average of £70 was spent on providing drugs for each patient treated in hospital last year.

Spending on medicines has increased more than overall hospital expenditure, which went up by 69% over the past five years, the report said.

It added that medicines needed to be used "safely, appropriately and in a cost-effective way to maximise their benefit".

Medicines account for about 6% of the running costs for acute hospitals but expensive medicines "are a particular pressure on hospital budgets", with a number of these expensive drugs contributing to the high level of spending on hospital medicines.

The NHS has got better at planning for new medicines and it is doing more to promote cost-effective prescribing Caroline GardnerAudit Scotland

Audit Scotland looked at spending on four of the medicines and said the bill for these in 2007-08 amounted to £25m.

However its report pointed out that the Scottish Medicines Consortium was providing health boards with better information on the anticipated impact new medicines will have on budgets, although a centralised record of what each patient has been prescribed has not developed quickly enough.

"Boards need better information on how medicines are used to help them monitor whether patients are getting the most appropriate medicines," said the report.

"Progress in developing information systems to support medicines management and help improve patient safety in hospitals has been slow."

This "hospital electronic prescribing and medicines administration" system was unlikely to be in place in all hospitals in the short to medium term, the report continued.

It recommended that the Scottish Government works with NHS boards to "develop a plan and timescale" to ensure that such a system is implemented across all boards in Scotland "as soon as possible".

Tough choices

Caroline Gardner, deputy Auditor General for Scotland, said: "Almost all patients take medicines while in hospital and these treatments can have a positive effect on patients' health and recovery.

"Scotland's hospitals are doing more to make sure that medicines are used safely and to reduce the risks to patients.

"Medicines also need to be used cost-effectively, and high-cost medicines are a particular pressure on budgets.

"The NHS has got better at planning for new medicines and it is doing more to promote cost-effective prescribing. But it needs better information on what medicines are being used to treat what conditions."

The report was published just days after Professor John Smyth, an Edinburgh University cancer specialist, said that tough choices may need to be made over which treatments should be paid for from limited public funds.