Spending on drugs in National Health Service hospitals will exceed €1,760 million in 2022, 12.1% more than the previous year, with the amount spent on psychotropic drugs doubling to €35 million.
According to the Infarmed report on the monitoring of drug consumption in hospitals last year, spending in NHS hospitals reached 1,762.1 million euros (ME), 190.9 million euros (+12.1%) more than in the same period the previous year.
The biggest spenders were oncology, with 549.9 ME, an increase of 47.7 ME (+9.5%), followed by amyloidosis (a rare disease), with 57.2 ME, an increase of 20.6 ME (+56%). At €35.4m, psychiatric drugs were the third most expensive therapeutic area, up €18.6m (+111%) on the previous year.
The drugs with the biggest increase in expenditure were HIV drugs (Lamivudine+Dolutegravir), which cost NHS hospitals ME33.4, more than tripling expenditure (+238% ; +23.5 million), Tafamidis (amyloidosis), whose expenditure doubled to 35.7 million (+18.3 ME), and Pembrolizumab (for triple-negative breast cancer), which cost 59.5 ME, 17.2 million more (+40.4%) than the previous year.
The report from the National Authority for Medicines and Health Products indicates that, last year, the Lisbon and Tagus Valley region saw the biggest increase in hospital expenditure (+100 ME), followed by the North region (+55 ME).
In terms of expenditure by service area, outpatient consultations and products sold abroad topped the list, with 789.1 million (+11%), followed by day hospitals (638.1 ME; +14%), hospital admissions (170 ME; +9.7%) and operating theatres, with 42.7 million (+2.45). With regard to additional diagnostic resources, hospitals spent 31 million euros on medicine and 20.8 million euros on emergency medicine.
The therapeutic classes with the highest expenditure in NHS hospitals were immunomodulators, which exceeded 553 million euros (+9.7%), antivirals, with an expenditure of over 217 million euros (+4.9%) and cytotoxic drugs, which cost public hospitals over 210 million euros (+6.2%).
The most costly active substances for NHS hospitals were normal human immunoglobulin (62.4 ME; +18.5%), pembrolizumab (for triple-negative breast cancer), on which over 59.4 million were spent (+40.7%), and ustecinumab (for Crohn’s disease), with an expenditure of 37.3 ME (17.3%).
NHS hospitals spent 286.4 million euros on orphan drugs (for rare diseases) last year, an increase of 34.3% (+73.1 million euros) on the same period the previous year.
In March, Infarmed had already revealed that National Health Service (NHS) spending on outpatient drugs in 2022 had seen the biggest increase in nine years, topping 1,567 million euros (+9.6%), and that user spending had risen by 7.4%.
According to data from the National Medicines and Healthcare Products Authority, last year NHS spending on medicines reached MEUR 1,567.6, 137.3 million more than in 2021, while user spending exceeded MEUR 816, 56 million more than in the same period the previous year.