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How Managed Entry Agreements Influence the Patients’ Affordability to Biological Medicines—Bulgarian Example

Managed entry agreements are applied in almost all European countries in order to improve patients’ access to therapy. The current study aims to evaluate the changes in the affordability of biological medicines for patients in Bulgaria during 2019–2022. The study is a top-down macroeconomic analysis...

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Autores principales: Mitkova, Zornitsa, Manev, Ivan, Tachkov, Konstantin, Boyadzhieva, Vladimira, Stoilov, Nikolay, Doneva, Miglena, Petrova, Guenka
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10486911/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37685461
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11172427
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author Mitkova, Zornitsa
Manev, Ivan
Tachkov, Konstantin
Boyadzhieva, Vladimira
Stoilov, Nikolay
Doneva, Miglena
Petrova, Guenka
author_facet Mitkova, Zornitsa
Manev, Ivan
Tachkov, Konstantin
Boyadzhieva, Vladimira
Stoilov, Nikolay
Doneva, Miglena
Petrova, Guenka
author_sort Mitkova, Zornitsa
collection PubMed
description Managed entry agreements are applied in almost all European countries in order to improve patients’ access to therapy. The current study aims to evaluate the changes in the affordability of biological medicines for patients in Bulgaria during 2019–2022. The study is a top-down macroeconomic analysis of the key economic indicators and reimbursed costs of biologic therapies. Affordability was determined as the number of working hours needed to pay for monthly therapy. The average NHIF budget for pharmaceuticals increased significantly along with inflation in the healthcare sector. Bulgarian patients had to devote a large part of their income to buying medicines if a co-payment existed. The percentage of the monthly income of pensioners needed for therapy co-payment varied between 10% and 280%. The hours of work required to purchase a package of biologicals varied between 7 and 137 working hours. The global economic crisis has affected Bulgaria and led to worsening economic parameters. There are still no well-established practices to control public spending, as the measures taken to reduce the final cost of medicines mainly affect the pharmaceutical companies. This type of cost-containment policy provides an opportunity for innovative treatment with biologicals for patients with inflammatory diseases. Most of the therapies cost more than the patients’ monthly income.
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spelling pubmed-104869112023-09-09 How Managed Entry Agreements Influence the Patients’ Affordability to Biological Medicines—Bulgarian Example Mitkova, Zornitsa Manev, Ivan Tachkov, Konstantin Boyadzhieva, Vladimira Stoilov, Nikolay Doneva, Miglena Petrova, Guenka Healthcare (Basel) Article Managed entry agreements are applied in almost all European countries in order to improve patients’ access to therapy. The current study aims to evaluate the changes in the affordability of biological medicines for patients in Bulgaria during 2019–2022. The study is a top-down macroeconomic analysis of the key economic indicators and reimbursed costs of biologic therapies. Affordability was determined as the number of working hours needed to pay for monthly therapy. The average NHIF budget for pharmaceuticals increased significantly along with inflation in the healthcare sector. Bulgarian patients had to devote a large part of their income to buying medicines if a co-payment existed. The percentage of the monthly income of pensioners needed for therapy co-payment varied between 10% and 280%. The hours of work required to purchase a package of biologicals varied between 7 and 137 working hours. The global economic crisis has affected Bulgaria and led to worsening economic parameters. There are still no well-established practices to control public spending, as the measures taken to reduce the final cost of medicines mainly affect the pharmaceutical companies. This type of cost-containment policy provides an opportunity for innovative treatment with biologicals for patients with inflammatory diseases. Most of the therapies cost more than the patients’ monthly income. MDPI 2023-08-30 /pmc/articles/PMC10486911/ /pubmed/37685461 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11172427 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Mitkova, Zornitsa
Manev, Ivan
Tachkov, Konstantin
Boyadzhieva, Vladimira
Stoilov, Nikolay
Doneva, Miglena
Petrova, Guenka
How Managed Entry Agreements Influence the Patients’ Affordability to Biological Medicines—Bulgarian Example
title How Managed Entry Agreements Influence the Patients’ Affordability to Biological Medicines—Bulgarian Example
title_full How Managed Entry Agreements Influence the Patients’ Affordability to Biological Medicines—Bulgarian Example
title_fullStr How Managed Entry Agreements Influence the Patients’ Affordability to Biological Medicines—Bulgarian Example
title_full_unstemmed How Managed Entry Agreements Influence the Patients’ Affordability to Biological Medicines—Bulgarian Example
title_short How Managed Entry Agreements Influence the Patients’ Affordability to Biological Medicines—Bulgarian Example
title_sort how managed entry agreements influence the patients’ affordability to biological medicines—bulgarian example
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10486911/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37685461
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11172427
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