On December 12, 2023, the Patent Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB), released the 9th edition of its annual report, CompassRx, which covers the 2021-2022 fiscal year. The report seeks to provide insights about the cost pressures driving changes in prescription drug expenditures in most Canadian public drug plans. Key findings from the report relate to prescription drug expenditures, the drivers of drug costs, and the drivers of dispensing costs.
A summary of the key findings includes:
- Total prescription drug expenditures rose by $3.1 billion between 2016/17 to 2021/22;
- Drug costs grew by 8.4% between 2020/21 and 2021/22;
- Dispensing costs grew by 0.1% between 2020/21 and 2021/22;
- Drug cost growth for the public plans in 2021/22 was primarily driven by an increase in the use of higher-cost drugs;
- The public drug plans covered by the report paid an average of 88% of the total $13.2 billion in prescription costs for 290 million prescriptions dispensed to 6.2 million active beneficiaries in 2021/22.
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