Balancing medicine prices and business sustainability: analyses of pharmacy costs, revenues and profit shed light on retail medicine mark-ups in rural Kyrgyzstan.

BMC Health Services Research
Brenda WaningLyne Soucy

Abstract

Numerous not-for-profit pharmacies have been created to improve access to medicines for the poor, but many have failed due to insufficient financial planning and management. These pharmacies are not well described in health services literature despite strong demand from policy makers, implementers, and researchers. Surveys reporting unaffordable medicine prices and high mark-ups have spurred efforts to reduce medicine prices, but price reduction goals are arbitrary in the absence of information on pharmacy costs, revenues, and profit structures. Health services research is needed to develop sustainable and "reasonable" medicine price goals and strategic initiatives to reach them. We utilized cost accounting methods on inventory and financial information obtained from a not-for-profit rural pharmacy network in mountainous Kyrgyzstan to quantify costs, revenues, profits and medicine mark-ups during establishment and maintenance periods (October 2004-December 2007). Twelve pharmacies and one warehouse were established in remote Kyrgyzstan with < US $25,000 due to governmental resource-sharing. The network operated at break-even profit, leaving little room to lower medicine prices and mark-ups. Medicine mark-ups needed for sustaina...Continue Reading

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Citations

Apr 6, 2013·Health Policy and Planning·Federica Angeli
May 1, 2019·Journal of Medical Economics·Roger Lee Mendoza
Oct 1, 2019·BMJ Global Health·Douglas BallDavid Beran
Nov 14, 2018·Daru : Journal of Faculty of Pharmacy, Tehran University of Medical Sciences·Peivand BastaniKhosro Keshavarz

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