26 April 2018 - The Directorate General of Health Care Supply and the Directorate General of Social Security published a ministerial direction on 19 February 2018 introducing a new incentive mechanism to encourage healthcare establishments to prescribe certain biosimilars when the hospital prescription may be dispensed in the community. 

The direction adds to another set of rather similar measures implemented at the beginning of the year (see our newsletter of January), this time targeting high volumes of prescriptions.

This time, the mechanism only covers certain groups of medicines whose biosimilars have been recently eligible for reimbursement and whose prescription is, at least in part, a hospital prescription dispensed in the community, namely:

• anti-TNF-alpha products from the etanercept group whose reference biological medicine is Enbrel (Pfizer), and
  
• the insulin glargine from the insulin glargine group whose reference biological medicine is Lantus (Sanofi-Aventis)
  

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