NPPA seeks info about pricing, products from stent makers

Taking a step closer towards fixing ceiling prices of coronary stents, national drug pricing regulator NPPA has asked manufacturers and marketers of the medical device to disclose detailed pricing data and information by the end of this month.
The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has also called for a meeting with the stakeholders to discuss the issue on January 24.
"As coronary stents have been notified by the Department of Pharmaceuticals as scheduled formulations, it is mandatory for all manufacturers/importers/marketers of coronary stents to file Form V as prescribed in DPCO, 2013 through the Integrated Pharmaceutical Database Management System (IPDMS)," NPPA said in a notification.

All the concerned manufacturers and marketers have been asked to send the information latest by January 31, 2017, failing which, action will be initiated as per provisions of DPCO 2013, against the company, it added.
The NPPA also asked the companies to send their their representatives for the meeting to be next week.
In a notification issued earlier, the Department of Pharmaceuticals has put "bare metal stents and drug eluting stents (DES), which include metallic DES and bioresorbable vascular scaffold (BVS)/biodegradable stents" in the Schedule I of DPCO 2013.
It had also asked NPPA to take further action in this regard urgently.

As per DPCO 2013, "ceiling price(s) for the medicine(s) added in the first schedule shall be fixed as per the provisions of this order within a period of 60 days from the date of the notification".