In 2021 exceeded 10 billion after the slowdown caused by Covid which slowed down treatments. Despite the increase in the ceiling, the breakthrough is 2 billion, half of which is borne by companies with the payback.

Pharmaceutical expenditure, starts to grow after the breakthrough caused by the pandemic, especially in 2020, has slowed down many treatments for patients and consequently the consumption of drugs and therapy in hospitals struggling with the Covid emergency. According to lqvia, the global provider of health data, the hospital pharmaceutical market closes 2021 with a total value of 10.3 billion euros: + 1.2% compared to 2020. A slight rise which, however, does not bring spending to the pre-pandemic : in 2019, in fact, hospital pharmaceuticals had stood at 10.9 billion. “For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, the hospital channel registers a recovery to values, however, at a total level lower than in the pre-pandemic period. In 2021 there was a resurgence in access to diagnoses and treatments which led to a timid recovery of the hospital pharmaceutical market. In 2020, for fear of contagion, many patients had decided not to go to the hospital and many doctors, they had deleted the visits and interventions wich they did not consider urgent”, said by Sergio Liberatore, CEO of Iqvia Italia. With these numbers, Iqvia calculates that the roof of the slowdown of the hospital expenses is 2.080 billion despite already last year the same roof has risen from 6.69% to 7.65% of the National Health Fund (excluding 0.2% of medicinal gasses). More resources that weren’t therefore sufficient to avoid overshoot. This means that for the payback mechanism 1,040 billion will be charged again by the pharmaceutical companies. That just last few days have paid off, according to the monitoring of the Italian Medicines Agency, in these days they paid 95% of the 2019-2020 payback: a high bill of 2.757 billion. As expected in recent years pandemic, warns Sergio Liberatore, from the agreed expense (that on the territory of the pharmacies, it is in decreasing with respect of the roof: also here despite in this case the roof of the agreed expenditure has been lowered to 7% of the FSN in 2021 from 7,96 in 2020, a surplus of approx 580 billion is expected. Returning to hospital pharmaceuticals, one of the main growing markets it was oncology with some innovative therapies among CarT medical cradles, which generated a growth of the expenditure of 12.7% compared to 2020 (+256 billion ). The oncology therapy, infacts, in 2021 are recovering compared to 2020, year in which the number of patients decreased for the difficulty in accessing to structures and then to diagnosis and therapies. In addition, the therapies recently launched on the market for spinal muscular atrophy, cystic, fibrosis, with a +3.4% compared to 2020. Auto-immune therapies also mark a +25% compared to 2020. Great growth also for influenza vaccines, +72%, compared to 2020. the main markets in decline according to iqvia numbers during 2021 were those of hepatitis C, due to the gradual eradication of HCV and the approaching goal of completely eradicating this disease with drugs. Biological therapies for oncological and autoimmune diseases also recorded a decrease in value due to the expiry of many patents and the consequent greater use of biosimilar products. This has allowed the lowering of the average price of these therapies. Thanks to the coronavirus vaccines, there were then fewer hospitalizations for covids and therefore a consequent lower use of drugs to manage patients in hospital.