Pharmac’s latest moves on what drugs to fund are designed to bring clarity to the wider public. File photo.
Photo: 123RF
Pharmac is considering trimming its list of medications awaiting funding, focusing on those that have stayed in the lowest-ranked group for more than two years.
There are more than 120 drugs currently being considered, a number of them are listed multiple times and many have been there for a number of years.
Pharmac director pharmaceuticals Adrienne Martin said the decision will bring clarity to the wider public.
“We heard from people that they often feel left in the dark about whether a medicine will be funded and that they really would value transparency and clarity, even if that means that a medicine won’t be funded.”
Medicines are funded by the government’s Budget allocation. Any funds left over are put towards the most prioritised medicines on the list, she said.
“The order of the list helps us negotiate for medicines in New Zealand so that we can be smart with our money and make our dollars go as far as possible and get as many medicines for people in New Zealand as we can,” Martin said.
“There are things coming on the list and things going off when we fund them. Every quarter [Pharmac’s clinical advisors] look at those medicines and to see if we’ve got the ranking right.”
The changes are still being consulted on. Martin said the proposal was a two-stage process.
“The first stage is, have we got the approach right? Is the approach to decline medicines from the options for investment list the right approach?
“Then if we’ve got it right, then we would look on consulting to decline the applications, naming what they are, naming the conditions, explaining a bit about what that might mean, and then seeking feedback from people on that.”
Pharmac’s Consumer and Patient Working Group chair and long-time advocate Malcolm Mulholland said the decision to trim the list “could be” beneficial.
“The one thing it will do is tell the patient that this drug has no hope of being funded in New Zealand and because of that, they can make alternative arrangements.”
“There are certainly a lot of grey areas that we would like to see cleared up for the benefit of transparency and for the benefit of patients.
But he questioned who made the calls on how drugs were prioritised and ranked.
“I’ve been quite critical about how those decisions are made, even to the point where I think we need to have a national debate if we’re going to continue to understand Pharmac. And there are many moral and ethical considerations.
“Are we saying that we prioritise drugs that are lifesaving over those that are life-extending or life-improving? Do we, for example, as a prioritisation process, purely leave a decision by chance? Do we flip a coin? This drug or that drug? Because at the moment, that might be our next best alternative.”
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