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TL;DRHilfstaxe is the German pricing agreement between the Deutscher Apothekerverband (DAV) and the GKV-Spitzenverband, formally the "Vertrag über die Preisbildung für Stoffe und Zubereitungen aus Stoffen", which sets how pharmacy-compounded preparations and their starting materials are priced for statutory health insurance.
German pharmacy prices for finished medicines are fixed by the Arzneimittelpreisverordnung (AMPreisV), which produces the nationwide Apothekenverkaufspreis. Compounded preparations do not fit that model: there is no packaged article with a list price, only substances, a container, working time and, for parenteral preparations, part-used vials of finished medicines. The AMPreisV therefore only supplies default surcharges and hands the detailed price formation to a negotiated contract. That contract is the Hilfstaxe. For anyone working on Rezeptur and Defektur in hospital or specialised pharmacies, it is the document that decides what a preparation may be billed at.
The Hilfstaxe has two anchors, and it matters which part of the contract you are looking at.
For substances and preparations made from substances, the anchor is the AMPreisV itself. §5 Abs. 1 AMPreisV sets the default: a fixed surcharge of 90 percent on the pharmacy purchase price excluding VAT, plus a compounding surcharge (Rezepturzuschlag), plus a flat fee of 8,35 Euro, plus VAT. §4 Abs. 1 AMPreisV sets a 100 percent surcharge for a substance merely repackaged, filled or labelled without alteration. §5 Abs. 4 and Abs. 5 AMPreisV then allow the relevant representative organisation of pharmacists to agree pharmacy purchase prices and the level of the fixed and compounding surcharges with the GKV-Spitzenverband. Where such an agreement exists, the agreed values replace the amounts in the ordinance. §4 Abs. 3 AMPreisV contains the parallel rule for substances. §5 Abs. 6 AMPreisV governs the situation where no agreement on compounding surcharges exists.
For preparations made from finished medicines, above all parenteral preparations in oncology, the anchor is §129 Abs. 5c Satz 1 SGB V: the prices agreed between the representative organisation of pharmacists and the GKV-Spitzenverband, in consultation with the Verband der Privaten Krankenversicherung, apply. If no agreement comes about, the arbitration board under §129 Abs. 8 SGB V decides. The same paragraph obliges pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies that supply finished medicines for parenteral preparations to transmit evidence of actual purchase prices electronically to the GKV-Spitzenverband, including rebates on the individual product and on total turnover.
The contract is organised in annexes (Anlagen), each covering one pricing object. The scope has changed materially since 2024.
| Annex | Pricing object | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Anlage 1 | Starting substances (Stoffe), price per gram or millilitre | Terminated with effect from 31 December 2023 |
| Anlage 2 | Packaging materials and containers (Gefäße) | Terminated with effect from 31 December 2023 |
| Anlage 3 | Parenteral preparations from finished medicines, including cytostatics | In force, terminated with effect from 31 March 2026, previous rules continue to apply |
| Anlagen 4 to 7 | Substitution therapy preparations | In force |
| Anlage 8 | Part quantities from N1 packs | In force |
| Anlage 9 | Oseltamivir in a pandemic situation | In force |
| Anlage 10 | Medicinal cannabis | In force |
Three cost blocks recur across the annexes: the calculation basis for the material consumed, a compounding surcharge or labour price per preparation type, and the container or carrier solution. For parenteral preparations the material basis is not the list price of the finished medicine but the pharmacy purchase price reduced by contractually defined discounts (Abschläge), which reflect the fact that specialised pharmacies buy oncology products well below list.
The build-up follows the same logic in both regimes, with different inputs:
Anlage 3 is the economic backbone of specialised and hospital pharmacy compounding. Roughly 300 pharmacies in Germany operate cleanroom laboratories, producing about 1,9 million cytostatic preparations and about 1,8 million parenteral solutions per year according to the DAV. Because a single preparation can carry several thousand euro of material, small changes in the discount percentages or in the labour price move large sums, and the parties have repeatedly ended up in arbitration and before the Bundessozialgericht over calculation bases, discounts and billing of residual quantities.
Two terminations frame the current situation. The DAV terminated Anlagen 1 and 2 with effect from 31 December 2023, so since 1 January 2024 classic compounded preparations have been billed under §§4 and 5 AMPreisV on the basis of actual purchase prices rather than a contractual substance list. On 20 February 2026 the DAV terminated the rules for parenteral special preparations with effect from 31 March 2026, citing a labour price of 100 Euro net per preparation that had not been adjusted since 2022, which opens the statutory arbitration procedure. On 2 March 2026 both sides agreed that all previous Hilfstaxe rules for parenteral special preparations continue to apply until a new agreement or an arbitration award is in place. For anyone building billing logic, that means the mechanism is stable for now but the parameters are explicitly provisional.
Compounding and procurement decisions need reliable article and substance data underneath the pricing rules: which pack of a finished medicine is currently available, what its pharmacy purchase and retail prices are, which strengths and pack sizes exist, whether a rebate contract or a reference price applies, and whether the product is affected by a supply shortage. That is the layer pharmazie.com covers, consolidated across 25+ databases in one search.
The honest limitation: pharmazie.com is not a Hilfstaxe calculation or billing engine. It does not reproduce the contract's annexes, does not compute Anlage 3 discounts or labour prices, and does not generate a billable compounding price. The authoritative texts are the contract documents published by the GKV-Spitzenverband and the DAV, and pharmacy software with a certified compounding module performs the calculation. What pharmazie.com supplies is the article, substance and availability data those calculations depend on.
