The list of vital drugs was created to control the pharmaceutical market of the Russian Federation. It is compiled by the Government of the Russian Federation annually, 2018 was no exception. The prices indicated in the vital drugs registry are the maximum for the drugs on the list. One way or another, all pharmacy organizations of the country should work with this document. Since the list of vital drugs is updated annually, there is a need for a brief overview of both the adopted document and the possible changes that have arisen in it.
The phrase “essential and essential medicines” was used until 2011, after which it was replaced by “essential and essential medicines”, or Vital and Essential Drugs. This is due to a change in the definitions of “drug” and “drug”. However, for most professionals working in pharmacy, it is more common to use the abbreviation Vital and Essential Drugs, which can be used in news articles. In documents, you need to use a new abbreviation - Vital and Essential Drugs.
Why is it published. Tasks solved with its help
In short, Vital and Essential Drugs is a list of drugs that is needed to treat diseases most commonly found in people. It covers all or almost all types of care, both outpatient and inpatient.
Due to the unstable situation in pharmaceutical markets around the world, it is difficult to predict price changes in advance, and therefore in some cases the state is forced to resort to their forced regulation. It sets a ceiling price above which certain medicines are prohibited. This allows you to keep prices for vital medicines at a fairly low level. Increasing the availability of drugs from the list of vital drugs reduces the cost of treatment for patients and medical institutions, which is the purpose of approving such a list.
As a result, people with different levels of financial capacity have equal access to basic treatment, and no one is left behind from medical care.
Legislation
In order to start forming a new list of vital drugs, an order of the Government of the Russian Federation is necessary. Only after the appearance of this order does a special interagency body begin to analyze the market for pharmaceutical products and isolate drugs that will be included in the registry in the future. The publication of the Government Order is regulated by Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 865 of 10.29.10.
List building process
After the Government of the Russian Federation orders to begin the development of a new document, the Ministry of Health will have to create a specialized interdepartmental commission to resolve all issues related to the new document. All meetings of the new body should be broadcast in real time on the website of the Ministry of Health, thus ensuring the transparency of the document development process. Also, organizations and citizens associated with the circulation of medicines in the country have the right to participate in the process of adjusting the list. They should be provided with the opportunity to make suggestions and influence the final form of the adopted list of vital drugs. All proposals must be sent for consideration to the commission before March 30, after which they will be taken into account in the development.
All results of meetings are documented and subsequently laid out for free access, so that all interested can study them.
Study document
Professionals directly working with drugs and their circulation in the market will be most interested in familiarizing themselves with the text of the register itself, since the legislation requires the availability of drugs from it in every working pharmacy in the country.
On official resources of state organizations
Separate government bodies allow you to browse online the vital drugs list: Roszdravnadzor and the Ministry of Health are obliged to immediately provide everyone with the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the document. Therefore, in order to see the text of the fresh registry itself, just go to the Internet resources of both departments and click on the section with documents.
For example, the Roszdravnadzor website has a separate library of regulatory documents related to medicines. You can get into it by clicking on "Medicines" at the top of the page. After that, a list of sections will open on the left, one of which concerns the monitoring of Vital and Essential Drugs. It is in this section that you can download all the documents related to the topic of vital medicines, including the texts of orders, analysis of the pharmaceutical market and, in fact, the register itself. All documents are in the latest edition, so you can not worry about their relevance.
Also in the monitoring section of Vital and Essential Drugs on the website of Roszdravnadzor there are answers to the most common questions regarding the registry itself and pricing. They disclose in great detail all the information, including those related to the problem of rising prices for popular drugs.
Hard copy in healthcare facilities
The law also obliges each individual organization, both medical and pharmaceutical, to have a printed set of regulatory documents available, which should also include a list of vital drugs. Any document from this list can be freely viewed and read, including all those papers that relate to the register of vital medicines. This documentation is either freely available on information stands, or it can be requested from an employee of the organization.
On other information portals on the web
Separately, it must be said that everything related to Vital and Essential Drugs is in the public domain, and therefore any site can freely host it. Therefore, in addition to official sources (websites of healthcare organizations or directly to the websites of the Ministry of Health and Roszdravnadzor), it can be found on many resources on law, pharmaceutical activities or human health. However, since no one controls the document itself and the information in it, you should carefully and critically treat third-party resources. And the best thing is to still find the right document on the website of the Ministry of Health, where you can find the latest version and not worry about the completeness and accuracy of the information in it.
Price regulation
The list of Vital and Essential Drugs will not make sense without establishing the boundary of the highest price at which a pharmacy or other organization can release them. Therefore, the federal authorities establish this border. They indicate in the list of Vital and Essential Drugs the size of the maximum allowance (both wholesale and retail) that can be set for a particular drug. This means that the end user will purchase this drug at a price not higher than a certain threshold. The final consumer can be both a person buying a drug in a pharmacy, and a healthcare organization: a hospital or clinic. The list of drugs included in Vital and Essential Drugs should be taken into account by all institutions associated with treatment.
Maximum allowable prices and how they are formed
Briefly, the process of establishing the final price of a drug can be represented as follows:
- The manufacturer of the drug uses the price at which a particular drug will be purchased from a wholesale organization. This price, according to the register issued, should not exceed a certain threshold value.
- After the purchase, wholesale organizations (they are also warehouses) establish a wholesale premium on the purchased product, along with which they sell the drug to retailers or hospitals.
- And, finally, a retail mark-up is added to the price already when the pharmacy sells the medicine to the final customer.
All listed prices and premiums are strictly limited in the register, and in the end the consumer receives the medicine at a price not exceeding a certain limit, which, of course, is good for him.
Hospital organizations, however, form the cost of the drugs used in the treatment without any retail allowances.
Execution control
Compliance with pricing rules must be controlled by local authorities in the region where the particular organization is located. From time to time, they have the right to carry out inspections during which control is made whether, for example, the pharmacy has a complete list of all the necessary drugs, as well as the established prices for them. In this case, citizens can also participate in the control. A few years earlier, in 2015 and 2016, citizens launched several large-scale inspections of health care organizations regarding Vital and Essential Drugs, but these inspections did not reveal any violations.
Preferential Medication
Some patients have the legal right to receive free medication from an additional list of vital drugs. This list is often revised, it includes some drugs, others are excluded, so all changes must be monitored on the websites of state health authorities.
The process of obtaining free medicines was approved by the Ministry of Health back in 2006, when a special Order was issued. It was after its publication that the list was formed, medicines from which certain categories of patients can receive for free.
In 2018, the additional list of drugs contained literally all popular groups of drugs, including painkillers (both narcotic and non-narcotic), anti-inflammatory drugs, antibiotics, and many others. Using only the medicines on the free vacation list, the patient can cure many common diseases, which makes medical care truly socially oriented.
But not all patients can claim for free medication. Groups of people who are entitled to free leave are approved by a separate list in the articles of the law on social assistance and federal law. This list includes, for example, veterans of the Great Patriotic War, people who were exposed to radiation after the Chernobyl disaster, people with disabilities and people with certain diseases. A complete list of “beneficiaries” can be found in the text of the above laws. The list is quite large, because, among other things, it provides a list of diseases that can be treated for free. Therefore, it makes sense for each patient to study this list more carefully and in relation to a specific situation.
In the event that the patient is included in any of the groups, he needs to consult a doctor or insurance. They will explain to him exactly what drugs he can get, after which they will write out a special prescription for a free vacation. This prescription has a separate form and must be certified not only by the signature and seal of the prescribing physician, but by the signature of the department head. This is necessary in order for free preparation of Vital and Essential Drugs to be carried out strictly for those to whom it is prescribed.
2018 List Changes: What's New
In 2018, as in previous years, the vital drugs list was once again updated and revised. It was replenished with new names, in total 60 appeared in the list of new substances. Of these, 22 names represent anticancer drugs, that is, medicines for the fight against cancer. Also, new dosage forms for the drugs already on the list go separately: there are 20 of them, 11 of which can be classified as oral. Only 17 dosage forms and 6 drugs are excluded from the list. However, the exception does not mean that the medicine will not be able to return to the list of vital drugs in the future. Among the 60 drugs added to the list there is Salofalk, which was removed from there in 2016. Therefore, after each change, the list must be studied again.