Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Ian Sanderson with Cowen. Please proceed with your question.
Ian Sanderson – Cowen
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Can you give us a little bit more detail, perhaps others know this but I don't, on the size of the price changes for CUBICIN in Q4 and Q1 of last year and then do you track the average price per vial data in Q1? And secondly, can you provide an update on the percent of CUBICIN sales that are used in the outpatient setting in Q1?
Steven Gilman
Sure. I think I got those. So In January 1 we had an 8% price increase – of 2008, sorry, 2008 we had an 8% price increase, and October 1st of 2008 we had a 7% price increase. That your last question was about outpatient sales, and it's about a 45% number, so 45% of the sales of CUBICIN are outside of the hospital in outpatient setting.
Ian Sanderson – Cowen
In fact on the – I'll go ahead.
Steven Gilman
I just wanted to make sure I understood the question about tracking price per vial on Q1. Can you maybe repeat that one?
Ian Sanderson – Cowen
Yes. Just looking to see if vial any contracting or anything along those lines given sales into the hospital, what if there – if you track the price per vial data?
Steven Gilman
We do very minimal contracting of the product beyond what we kind of the standard contracting in the government, et cetera. So there really was no increase in additional contracting.
Ian Sanderson – Cowen
Okay. Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Alan Carr with Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.
Alan Carr – Needham & Company
Hi, good afternoon, everybody. Wonder if you could talk a bit more about the potential effects of the economy here, what you have seen so far? Do you see some sort of changes in potential impact maybe from reduction in elective surgeries or do you see a – do you get a sense there is a preferred use of vancomycin because it's less expensive because of the economy, any sort of factors there that might be playing in the CUBICIN sales in the first quarter?
Rob Perez
Sure. We haven't seen any major change, anything that you can really kind of put your finger on. There haven't been hospitals changing their protocols or anything like that. We have heard evidence of some decrease in elective surgeries. We have seen some reports of hospital census being a little bit down, but really there hasn't been any systemic change in the way hospitals are treating their drugs or more specifically antibiotics. What I think you do see though is, you do see maybe pharmacists having a little bit more impetus to look at the cost of therapies and maybe a little bit more pressure on high price drugs like CUBICIN which is why our folks are spending so much time talking about the pharmacoeconomic benefits of CUBICIN and the fact that overall in terms of the cost to the entire hospital system and the overall hospital beyond just pharmacy, CUBICIN is actually beneficial. So that is really been the focus of our team, but nothing that is kind of a major effect so far.
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