pharmaceutical strategic purchasing: a key to improve access to medicines

Pharmaceutical Strategic Purchasing: a Key to Improve Access to Medicines

Pharmaceuticals are often considered as the most significant cost driver of health care expenditures and at the same time have a major impact on patients’ curative processes and outcomes. Other pieces of evidence emphasize that drugs are the input for the production of good health. They are considered as the most important and expensive element in the healthy supply chain and are more associate...

Strategic procurement and international collaboration to improve access to medicines

Efficient procurement of medicines is more than just obtaining the lowest price. It is about creating a healthy market where products of good quality are available at affordable prices on a sustainable basis and at the right time.1 In this context, a strategic approach to procurement is vital. Such an approach should encompas all activities that might improve the efficiency of procurement – e.g...

Strategic purchasing to improve health system performance: key issues and international trends.

Introduction All health systems exercise some form of purchasing, which, in its most basic form, constitutes the allocation of funds to provider organizations. When purchasing goes beyond the simple reimbursement of products and services and is aligned to societal healthcare needs and wishes, it has the potential to play a key role in determining a health system’s overall performance. However, ...

Access to medicines: relations with the institutionalization of pharmaceutical services

OBJETIVE To analyze the relationship between access to medicines by the population and the institutionalization of pharmaceutical services in Brazilian primary health care. METHODS This study is part of the Pesquisa Nacional sobre Acesso, Utilização e Promoção do Uso Racional de Medicamentos - Serviços 2015 (PNAUM - National Survey on Access, Use and Promotion of Rational Use of Medicines - S...

TRIPS, pharmaceutical patents, and access to essential medicines: a long way from Seattle to Doha.

What’s Needed to Develop Strategic Purchasing in Healthcare? Policy Lessons from a Realist Review

Background In the context of serious concerns over the affordability of healthcare, various authors and international policy bodies advise that strategic purchasing is a key means of improving health system performance. Such advice is typically informed by theories from the economics of organization (EOO). This paper proposes that these theories are insufficient for a full understanding o...