As part of the Genetics Month Celebration, DOH released the Drug Price Reference Index, DPRI. This list, updated annually, mandates the ceiling of prices of essential medicines. This is a good guide for us to check whenever we are purchasing medicines. It’s good to know that there are affordable, yet effective medicines we can avail of that our government is constantly monitoring.

Press Release

The Department of Health (DOH), as part of the Generics Month celebration, today launched the Drug Price Reference Index (DPRI) and its implementing guidelines to increase the transparency and efficiency of government procurement of essential medicines.

The DPRI lists the mandated ceiling prices for the public sourcing of essential medicines by government hospitals and Regional Health Offices (RHOs) under the jurisdiction of the DOH. It should also serve as a guide to all government entities to rationalize the procurement prices of medicines in the public sector.

The extreme variability of procurement prices of medicines in the Philippines has been known to contribute to the lack of access of medicines in many health facilities. In 2011, the DOH began to study the procurement prices of essential medicines in DOH hospitals with the aim of coming up with a standardized reference for pricing essential medicines for public funding.

The current DPRI covers all the medicines in the Philippine National Formulary (PNF) with price data coming from the DOH Central Office and its 72 retained hospitals, Regional Health Offices (RHOs) and the PITC Pharma, Inc. (PPI).The DPRI is set at the median value of prevailing tender prices for most of the medicines in the PNF.

“We hope that the DPRI will be a useful tool for hospitals and other government agencies to improve the efficiency of pricing and good governance in medicines. We believe that the transparent and fair pricing of medicines is an important pillar of universal health care by improving the availability and access of patients to medicines”, said Health Secretary Enrique T. Ona.

Republic Act (RA) 9502 or the Universally Accessible Cheaper and Quality Medicines Act of 2008 gave the DOH instruments to monitor and regulate the prices of drugs and medicines to protect consumers and the public procuring entities from excessive mark-ups applied to medicines resulting from information asymmetry and the lack of effective market competition.

The DPRI can be accessed online at http://www.ncpam.doh.gov.ph/index.php/drug-price