US Medicare payments reduced for compounds

The US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced that, from January next year, it will "significantly lower" payments under the federal Medicare program to pharmacies that make compounded inhalation drugs for patients who have respiratory conditions such as asthma.

The move follows a recent Food and Drug Administration warning to three pharmacies about the mass production of unapproved respiratory drugs (Marketletter August 21).

The CMS' Administrator, Mark McClellan, in a letter to Senator Chuck Grassley (Republican, Iowa), said that the reduced fees would remove "any inappropriately large financial incentives" that might encourage pharmacists to substitute branded drugs for compounds, even where there is no medical benefit to patients.