Written question WQ93670
- Asked by
- Adam PricePlaid
- To be answered by
- Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care
- Tabled
- Due
- Answered
- Time to answer
- 6 days
Question
What proportion of NHS Wales's drug expenditure was spent on generic, rather than branded, versions of medicines in 2023-24?
Answer
Answered by Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care
The information below has been provided by NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership. It provides the number and cost of prescription items dispensed in primary care in Wales in 2023/24 for medicines for which generic versions were available.
Total Items
Total Generic Items
Generic Items %
Basic Cost of All Items
Basic Cost of Generics
Cost of Generics %
81,878,211
63,349,316
77.4%
£633,382,585
£244,752,586
38.6%
Medicines for secondary care are procured through competitive tendering processes which may mean some branded medicines are available at lower prices than generic versions. In addition, all supplies of medicines in hospitals in Wales are recoded by their generic name. For these reasons it is not possible to provide a figure for the proportion of secondary care medicines’ expenditure on generic versions.