Abstract
Spending on the health system represents a significant portion of the budget of Brazilian municipalities, the purchase of medicines stands out as one of the largest health expenditures. In this sense, the objective of this work was to evaluate the economy of the public purchase of medicines using an intermunicipal consortium. Reports on drug purchase costs in a municipality were analyzed before and after a municipality joined the consortium. The purchase of medicines through the consortium showed savings for the analyzed municipality of 23.5% of the total spent, in addition, joining the consortium proved to be a good administrative strategy, providing agility and rationality in the use of financial resources.