HOW DID COVID-19 AFFECT PRESCRIBING BEHAVIOURS? FIVE KEY FINDINGS FROM A NEW STATE OF THE NATION REVIEW
July 14, 2022 | NHS, healthcare
Published earlier this month, Wilmington Healthcare’s new State of the Nation report draws on a raft of data from across primary and secondary care to show what actually happened to the NHS and its prescribing behaviours during the peak of the pandemic. Oli Hudson summarises five of the key findings:
1. We found there was an unprecedented degree of upheaval in the physical delivery of care during 2020 and 2021, with nearly all therapy areas seeing reductions in activity.
The report highlights the scale and immediacy of the transformation in delivery across the NHS. Analysis of the NHS’s Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data shows inpatient spells collapsed from 17.3m in 2019/20 to 12.8m in 2020/21, as the NHS took dramatic steps to minimise patient footfall. Outpatient care saw a similarly stark redrawing of activity, with a 39 per cent drop in in-person appointments and over a five-fold increase in telemedicine appointments.
With the exception of infectious disease – which saw an increase for obvious reasons – all therapy areas saw annual declines in admissions in 2020/21. Spells in oncology, gastroenterology, musculoskeletal, respiratory and ophthalmology all fell in 2020/21, undoing historic growth. Genitourinary and cardiovascular admission also fell, but not as sharply as the other major therapy areas.
2. These operational changes, together with the wider effects of COVID-19, carried through into some major shift in prescribing patterns across primary and secondary care.
In secondary care, mucolytics saw the sharpest percentage increase in costs in 2020/21, partly due to increased prescribing of the cystic fibrosis drug ivacaftor. Spend on ophthalmic preparations, meanwhile, fell by 14.6 per cent as problems maintaining routine eye appointments in secondary care impacted spend on high-value treatments for wet AMD. Antibacterials fell sharply too as prescribing of antibiotics continued to shrink – though this was potentially exacerbated by the reduction of inpatient admissions, which meant fewer non-COVID-related hospital-acquired infections. Drug areas associated with oncology and immunology provided the largest source of prescribing expenditure, showing their considerable cost burden on NHS budgets. Cytotoxic drug costs increased by 9.0 per cent to £1.8 billion in 2020/21, making it by far the largest single section in terms of prescribing costs.
In primary care, meanwhile, the largest area of expenditure was diabetes, which accounted for £1.2 billion of prescribing costs in 2020/21. However, by far the largest percentage increase in expenditure involved antidepressants, which rose by two-thirds (66 per cent) to £371m in 2020/21: a reflection, perhaps, of the toll that the pandemic took on the nation’s mental health.
3. Amid the disruption and change, there were some clear “winners” which benefited from significantly increased prescribing spend during this period.
Drilling down into specific drugs, the use of innovative treatments in secondary care remained strong despite the pandemic. The NHS’s commitment to provide innovative therapies to address unmet patient needs is exemplified by the cystic fibrosis treatment ivacaftor, spending on which rose over three-fold to £393.9m in 2020/21. Other recently approved products, emicizumab for haemophilia A and asfotase alfa for hypophosphatasia, also saw costs increase by more than 200 per cent in 2020/21.
In primary care, a different story unfolds. Unlike secondary care, the leading primary care products sat primarily within respiratory, cardiovascular and diabetes therapy areas. There was also a greater number of generic products. Anticoagulant therapies such as apixaban, rivaroxaban and edoxaban topped the spending charts, while respiratory products such as inhalable treatments for asthma and COPD were another significant area of spend. However, the most dramatic change in primary care prescribing in 2020/21 involved the anti-depressant sertraline, which saw more than four-fold growth (305 per cent). Statins, such as atorvastatin, and the GERD drug omeprazole also saw significant gains. All are suggestive of the strains that the pandemic placed on people’s lifestyles and ability to manage their conditions.
4. Yet many other treatments were badly affected by shifts in prescribing, particularly high-value novel drugs that required substantial amounts of patient supervision in primary care
It is worth noting the type of drugs that saw the biggest falls – in particular, there were notable dips in the prescribing of new, high value drugs in primary care during the peak of the pandemic. We can only speculate about why this may be – perhaps because some of these drugs are likely to need an acute sponsor which may have been more challenging during a period of restricted access to outpatient care. It may also be that GPs and/or area prescribing committees were more reticent to prescribe new medications at a time when primary care was less able to have regular, face-to-face contact with patients.
5. Meanwhile, the stark variations in prescribing trends across the country shine a spotlight on inequalities of access.
Two other data sets should give pharma further food for thought. The first is the referral to treatment (RTT) waiting list, which ballooned from 4 million incomplete pathways prior to the pandemic to more than 7 million in November 2021. There is no better illustration of the magnitude of the backlog facing the NHS, and the enormous pressure on the health service to deliver.
The other is the regional variation in per capita spend on prescribing, which ranged from over £400 per person in the highest spending regions, to just over £200 per person in the lowest spending regions. Many factors are likely to be behind this, including demography, patient demands and expectations, clinical choice, differences in interpretation of guidelines, and the level of bureaucratic burden and financial stress within systems.
Whatever the cause, the scale of variation underlines the continuing disparities in population health management within the NHS. The importance of prescribing in managing both chronic and acute health conditions is well-known, yet there are still stark variations in prescribing practice. This ultimately suggests that where you live continues to define how you are treated, and leaves much to ponder, for both pharmaceutical companies and Integrated Care Systems, as they prepare for the future.
This article is adapted from a longer piece that appeared on the PharmaField website earlier this month. To download the full State of the Nation report, visit Wilmington Healthcare’s Knowledge Hub.
Secondary care data cited in this article is taken from the English Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) database produced by NHS Digital. Copyright © 2022, NHS Digital. Re-used with the permission of NHS Digital. All rights reserved.
This content was provided by Wilmington Healthcare
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