The Pharmaceutical Industry Scheme Governance Review Board (PISGRB) provides guidance on the acceptability of Primary Care Rebate Schemes (PCRS) being offered to the NHS by the pharmaceutical industry. These rebate schemes are predominantly offered by medicines manufacturers as a way of reducing the effective price of a medicine to a commissioner without affecting the published list price. Companies may be reluctant to change the list price which is used as a reference for medicines pricing in other countries, and a rebated price is less likely to be known by their competitors.
Our role is to provide an independent assessment of the rebate schemes offered to us. We do not approve or reject schemes, neither do we act as a partner in the contract between the NHS and the company. Individual commissioners can accept or reject any scheme as they see fit. Our assessment is there simply to assist that process.
The assessment process is described in detail below, it is designed to identify potential issues that commissioners may wish to consider when deciding whether to use any of these rebate schemes. The assessment is split into three sections as follows.
Clinical: The clinical assessment looks at the licensed uses of the medicine, relevant national guidance and possible alternative treatments to establish whether the product has a place in therapy or not. It does not replace a local formulary committee assessment.
Contractual: We identify any potential issues from the terms and conditions that commissioners may want to consider in deciding on the acceptability of the scheme.
We have published some further guidance around the contractual assessment process that is designed to assist companies seeking to submit schemes and explain the assessment process. You can download the guidance below:
Guidance on PISGRB Contractual Assessment.pdf
Financial: The potential financial impact of the scheme, how difficult it is to administer and the likelihood of achieving savings are assessed.
All assessments are placed on our website and are available to subscribers once they are logged in. Requests are welcomed for additional schemes that need assessing. Any comments about assessments should be directed to rebates@prescqipp.info.
