NHS’s giant headache as it overspends £50m ...on basic painkillers

THE cash-strapped NHS is wasting millions of pounds a year on common painkillers by failing to drive a hard enough bargain with suppliers, according to a damning new report.

Health managers could save more than £50million a year on paracetamol, aspirin and ibuprofen alone if they simply bought the drugs from Asda or Superdrug. Instead, despite the enormous bulk purchasing power of the NHS, they are routinely paying double or more per pill than high street prices, report author Dr Andrew Hill discovered.

As a result, taxpayers are wasting £41million on overpriced paracetamol, £10 million on aspirin, and £3million on ibuprofen.

The NHS is currently facing a cash crisis and being forced to ration non-essential surgery. The money that could be saved by buying painkillers at high street prices could pay for 10,000 hip or knee replacement operations.

Using official NHS statistics, Dr Hill found the service pays 3p on average for a standard 500mg paracetamol tablet – or 60p for a packet of 20. By contrast, members of the public can buy it for 1.2p a pill in Asda – or 24p for 20. This means the NHS is overspending by £40.8million on just one formulation of the drug. Last night, Dr Hill, a pharma- cologist at Liverpool University, said: ‘It seems ridiculous that someone from a hospital can’t just go down to Asda and buy the paracetamol they need. If supermarkets can get these drugs so much more cheaply, you do wonder, why can’t the NHS?’

In his report, commissioned by the World Health Organisation, Dr Hill found the NHS is dishing out 3p for every 75mg pill of aspirin – the lowdose type prescribed to millions to cut their risk of heart attack or stroke. The public can buy it for 1.5p in Superdrug, or 30p per packet.

Consequently, the NHS is responsible for a taxpayer-funded overspend of £9.6 million on low-dose aspirin. It is also paying almost six times over the odds for the standard 300mg painkilling dose of aspirin, at 10.5p a pill, compared to the best high street price of 1.8p, again at Asda. However, because this is rarely prescribed, the overall over- spend on those tablets is far lower, at £110,000. Similar price differences for 200mg and 400mg ibuprofen mean the Health Service is paying £2.8million too much.

Dr Hill outlined his findings yesterday at the European Cancer Congress in Amsterdam.

Speaking to The Mail on Sunday, he claimed: ‘ Instead of cruelly rationing hip and knee replacements, the NHS could do thousands more of them if they simply drove a harder bargain on these pills.’

The Department of Health said: ‘We provide a framework to enable hospitals to get the best price for a drug, but it is up to individual trusts to negotiate prices.’