COLLECTION OF DATA ON SALES OF DRUGS PAID FOR BY THE NHS
PRESS RELEASE
PRESS RELEASE
The conditions for disclosing data on doctors' prescriptions to private entities
The Competition Authority has submitted a report to the Minister of Health on an anti-competitive situation that might arise as a result of certain provisions regulating the system for collecting sales data from public and private pharmacies regarding drugs and medicines paid for by the NHS.
Current provisions require Federfarma to collect the data from the cartons containing the drugs and medicines, and to submit it to the Ministry of Health. The 2001 Finance Act also made provision for the collection of "optically-readable data taken from doctors' prescriptions, indicating the prescribing physician's code, the patient's code and the date of issue of the prescriptions".
While it is reasonable for this data to be collected by the National Health Service authorities for the purposes of control and for their medical expenditure policies, the Authority pointed out the anti-competitive effect that this might have, if any of this information were to be disclosed to private entities, particularly to pharmaceutical companies. Federfarma is expressly given this possibility by Decree No 7032 of 18 June 1999.
Firstly, giving this data to the pharmaceutical companies could considerably heighten market transparency and hence make anti-competitive conduct easier. Secondly, by being informed of the ways in which doctors prescribe medicines could affect the pharmaceutical companies' advertising and promotional strategies, and encourage them to act in a way that might place restrictions on the doctors' freedom of choice, which could also be done by dividing up the territory.
In order to obviate these risks, the Authority has ruled that the disclosure of information on the prescribing physician and the patient must be expressly prohibited. Sales data should only be notified in an aggregate form, in such a way that it is impossible to directly or indirectly monitor the conduct of competitor companies in extremely narrowly-defined areas of the territory.
Rome, 12 April 2001