The country has by far the lowest penetration of generic drugs in the EU (11% of the total volume of reimbursed pharmaceuticals versus 49% in Member States with available data in 2015) (Figure 14). To increase the use of generics, the Ministry of Health introduced a generic substitution policy in late 2014. Although there is no gatekeeping and outpatient contacts are low, it does not seem to lead to elevated numbers of hospital cases.