SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Sep 16 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands reported this Thursday in the Governing Council of the pharmaceutical expenditure of the Canary Health Service for the month of August, which amounted to 52,346,559.44 euros and includes spending on drugs and diet therapy products, as well as the amount for the exemption from the copayment for people with incomes below 18,000 euros per year.
By Health areas, spending on medicines was distributed as follows: Tenerife, with 21,359,987.24 euros; Gran Canaria, with 21,533,380.13; Lanzarote, with 2,400,138.94; La Palma, with 2,169,036.34; Fuerteventura, with 1,586,912.46; La Gomera, with 579,053.25, and El Hierro, with 260,979.32.
The number of prescriptions issued in August was 4,427,092, 9.54% more than in the same month of the previous year, of which 1,954,431 corresponded to the Health Area of Gran Canaria and 1,848,345 to Tenerife . In the rest of the Health areas, the number of recipes ranged between 219,169 in Lanzarote and 24,437 in El Hierro.
As for the average cost per prescription, it stood at 11.68 euros, compared to 11.65 euros in August 2020, which represents a 0.28% increase, the Executive points out in a note.
By Health areas, La Gomera and La Palma were above 12 euros in average monthly expenditure per prescription (with 12.53 and 12.17, respectively), while the remaining islands showed an average expenditure lower than that amount .
The General Administration of the State establishes that, in order to standardize the information criteria of all the autonomous communities, the pharmaceutical expenditure that is reported monthly to the Ministry of Health does not include the billing of diet therapy products or the amount resulting from the application of the Decree-Law 1/2020, of urgent measures regulating aid for the acquisition of medicines financed by the National Health System (SNS) to people who have the status of Social Security pensioners and their beneficiaries whose annual income is lower to 18,000 euros.
Based on these criteria, the amount of pharmaceutical expenditure of the SCS for the month of August that is communicated to the Ministry amounts to 49,889,487.68 euros.
