What Was, and What's Expected to Be

Earlier this month, Pembroke Consulting and Drug Channels released their official analysis of prescription data and industry trends in the report The Use of Medicines in the United States: Review of 2011. 

A quick summary:

·         the total number of retail prescriptions dispensed grew only 0.3% from 2010

      ·         chains pharmacies won again, growing six times faster than the overall industry

·         all other retail formats – independents, supermarkets, and mail order – shrank in both   absolute size and market share

·         chain drugstores filled 2,212,000,000 prescriptions in 2011, a 1.8% increase from the 2010 numbers; 2011 chain drugstore market share was 52.5%, an increase of 0.8%

·         independents filled 740,000,000 prescriptions in 2011, a decrease of 1.1%; independent market share decreased by .2% to 17.6%; independents’ market share in 1992 was 37.1%

·         supermarkets filled 483,000,000 prescriptions 2011, a decrease of 1.2%; supermarket market share decreased 0.1% to 11.5%; supermarkets filled about the same number of prescriptions since 2008, showing zero growth in four years

·         mail order pharmacy prescriptions reached 780,000,000, a decrease of 1.5%; total market share dropped to 18.5%, a decline of .3%

·         for the five-year period from 2007 to 2011, the number of prescriptions filled at chains grew twice as quickly as the overall market

 In 2011, drugstore chains and mass merchants with pharmacies continued to gain market share at the expense of all other dispensing formats.  CVS and Walgreens prevailed with new store openings, organic growth from larger and busier pharmacies, and acquisitions of regional chains.  Wal Mart, now the third-largest chain, used its $4 generic program to continue to increase traffic at its pharmacies.  2012 is expected to tell a slightly better story for non-chains, which have been picking up numbers from the 90 million Express Scripts prescriptions previously filled at Walgreens.  Stay tuned for how the ESI story develops.

Pharmacy’s next growth spurt?  Specialty drugs.
According to research conducted by IMS Health – a technology based analytics and services company – and Pembroke Consulting, a specialty drug dispensing boom is expected in the coming year.  The projected growth is encouraging market entry, drawing investment capital into the pharmacy industry, and increasing competition for specialty pharmacy services.  Dispensing of specialty pharmaceuticals will become less concentrated as regional chains and independents penetrate this market, and manufacturers will face increased pressure to broaden limited distribution networks.

Revenues in the pharmaceutical industry will shift from traditional brand-name drugs to specialty drugs over the next few years.  While a majority of specialty drugs are dispensed via a specialty pharmacy, any licensed pharmacy can dispense a specialty drug as long as the product can be purchased from a manufacturer or via an authorized wholesale distribution channel.  As a result, numerous pharmacies with specialty drug capabilities will compete vigorously to dispense these expensive therapies.

Top 10 U.S. Selling Drugs – 2010 vs. Expected Numbers in 2016:

** names in pink print are specialty drugs


2010             2016

Plavix                        Rituxan
Lipitor                       Humira
Seretide/Advair      Avastin
Seroguel                  Januvia

Epogen/Procrit      Advair

Actos                        Revlimid
Abilify                       Lantus
Enbrel                      Enbrel
Singulair                  Remicade
Remicade               Atripla

Wednesday, March 28, 2012