Pharmaceutical cost analysis of dental diseases: An Indian scenario

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Medicines are an integral part of the health system and the accessibility hugely depends on affordability and availability of medicines. Oral health is an integral component of overall well-being but is ironically often one of the most neglected areas of healthcare. There is paucity of data on the pharmaceutical cost components of dental disease, so this study aims to address this lacuna on the pricing of medicines. OBJECTIVE: This research study can be considered a partial economic evaluation that focuses on an estimation of costs associated with medicines used in the treatment of selected oral diseases to suggest policy measures to reduce out-of-pocket expenditure on medicines. METHODS: Using cost analysis research design on the PharmaTrac dataset and cross-comparing it with public procurement rates of the Rajasthan Medical Services Corporation (RMSC) indicates that the pharmaceutical cost of treating caries and periodontitis is approximately three times higher if median retail prices are considered instead of RMSC public procurement costs. RESULTS: Medicine cost of treating a single episode of caries or periodontitis using RMSC medicine rates at all levels of care is approximately 1.9-2.5 times lower than retail prices of the same formulations. CONCLUSION: Our results strongly suggest that centralized public procurement of dental medicines with an efficient monitoring and control can reduce the out-of-pocket expenditure.