The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7466 p210-213
25 August 2007

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What can the NHS learn from health care provision in other countries?

Cathal Gallagher and Nathalie Bailey-Flitter examine the provision of prescription-only medicines in Australia and Ireland and attempt to assess which elements of these provisions would improve health care resource allocation in the NHS

Pharmacy around the world series

SUMMARY

The increasing sophistication of modern medicines makes it increasingly difficult for any country adequately to provide cutting-edge health care for all its citizens while providing financial incentives for innovation.

Also, the more a country invests in health care spending, the more pharmaceutical companies will invest in new and innovative treatments and the higher the cost of providing these treatments to patients will become.

Investing larger sums of money in the NHS merely propagates this upward spiral. Rather, we should endeavour to make the most of our existing levels of NHS spending.

This article will examine the provision of prescription-only medicines in two other countries with similar health services to our own, namely Australia and Ireland, and attempt to assess which elements, if any, of these provisions would improve health care resource allocation in the NHS.

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