Medicines at doctor's clinic may cost you a lot less

The medicines you buy from your general physician could be cheaper than that from the local pharmacist, if the doctors take up a proposal put forward by the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA).

At a meeting with the Indian Medical Association (IMA) on Tuesday, FDA commissioner Mahesh Zagade suggested that the doctors purchase the medicines they require directly from pharma companies, instead of going through the dealers.

Dr Anil Pachnekar, president of the IMA’s state unit, said, “The FDA commissioner suggested that we purchase the drugs directly from the pharma companies. This would reduce the prices by 8-10%. We found it logical and accepted it.”

Representatives of the state pharmacists association also attended the meeting. Trade bodies have been urging the state government to curb the sale of medicines by doctors and to restrict them to prescribing drugs.

 If the proposal is implemented it could benefit patients, who would get medicines at a lower price, Pachnekar said.

Zagade said, “The law says that doctors can purchase medicines directly from pharma companies. So why pay more by buying them from the dealers? We didn’t suggest anything new. This will benefit patients,” the FDA commissioner said.

The IMA also discussed the objections of the Maharashtra State Chemists and Druggists Association (MSCDA).

“Since the pharmacists representatives were present at the meeting, we decided to reconfirm the matter in their presence,” said Dr Pachnekar.

“We also discussed their request to disallow doctors to sell drugs at their clinics.”

The IMA state president expressed happiness that the FDA had rubbished the demand of the trade bodies and that it had also relaxed the rule requiring doctors to keep a day-to-day record of medicine purchases. “Now, we will have to only maintain the purchase records and not submit weekly reports to the FDA,” said Pachnekar.