What medicines are approved for Drugs Payment Scheme?

Gussoe

My spouse pays 130e/month on a prescribed medication and when she applied for reimbursement via the Drugs Payment Scheme but she was told no, it's not approved.

The medication is prescribed by a doctor here in Ireland, it's called Armour Thyroid and she has been taking it for 10 years. There are synthetic versions which she has tried but none of them worked. She also regularly takes a blood panel every few months, cost 90e which is not included obviously in the DPS reimbursement.

Armour Thyoid i believe does come manufactured in the US, however it's an Irish domiciled company called Allergan.

Shouldn't there be some sort of transparency around what medicines are approved for the DPS scheme and how those decisions are made?

Tried contacting the HSE a while back but have been met with silence.

L1011

The lists are and always have been publicly available - https://www.hse.ie/eng/staff/pcrs/items/

I would wonder if they consider this to be a food supplement and not a medicine as such.

If you live near the border, it may be cheaper to get 3/6 month supplies privately from a pharmacist up there as a quick google suggests the prices are vastly lower in the UK.

Gussoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118951782#Comment_118951782

Thanks.

Though if it's a food supplement why would that require a prescription and dispensed from a pharmacy?

Edit: The links on that site don't work.

The Hound Gone Wild

As L1011 mentioned items covered by various drug schemes are available at the above links.

In the case of armour thyroid, in Ireland, it is classified as an 'unlicenced medicine'. This means the company who make the drug haven't applied for a license to sell it in Ireland. This can be for a number of reasons but it's usually because it is not profitable for the company. The product is still available with a doctors prescription but the pharmacist usually has to source it from a specialist supplier who typically have no competition so can charge what they like. Unlicensed medicines tend not to be covered on government schemes, though a select few are. Armour thyroid isn't one of those. You're still entitled to a 20% tax rebate of the cost so hold onto the big blue receipts you're given in the bag.

It's also important to know that because it doesn't have a license in Ireland it (more or less) falls outside of the remit of the medicines regulator here, the HPRA. This means that the prescribing doctor takes full personal responsibility for the contents of the bottle. The regulator and the pharmacist take no responsibility for what's actually in the bottle. Armour thyroid is a medicine and not a supplement, it's manufactured in the USA and is under regulatory oversight of the FDA.

If had any questions like this you should have asked your local pharmacist who, I'm sure, would have been happy to explain.