New Zealand has over 100 medicines on the Options for Investment (OFI) List, which is priority medicines that are waiting to be publicly funded. Photo: 123rf
Drug buying agency Pharmac is bringing patients and consumers to the table.
It has announced a new Consumer and Patient Working Group after years of reviews calling for major change.
The group, made up of the consumer and patient community, will help steer a 12-month reset, aimed at making Pharmac more open and responsive. It will decide what Pharmac focuses on for the reset programme, taking a hands-on role in the delivery of the work to ensure it reflects consumers' needs, values, and perspectives.
Patient advocate, Dr Malcolm Mulholland, has been appointed Chair of the working group. He told Morning Report he hopes the group will provide clarity on how Pharmac chooses what drugs it funds.
"People just do not know how Pharmac arrives at the decisions they do and why it takes so long. I think that's probably the major bugbear that patients experience, and that's one area that we are very keen to get involve with and try and improve it."
Medicine NZ found on average, applications for funding have been with Pharmac for six years.
New Zealand has over 100 medicines on the Options for Investment (OFI) List, which is priority medicines that are waiting to be publicly funded. The cost of clearing this list is estimated to be $1 billion. According to Medicine NZ, 1.4 million people would benefit from the medicines.
Dr Mulholland, who has been apart of petitions to fund medicines taken to Parliament, criticised the need for patients to publicly put pressure on politicians to fund drugs.
"It is not a healthy process, and it's not how overseas jurisdictions like Pharmac operate, it's actually very unusual," he said. "That shows us that the Pharmac process is sick, so to speak, and we need to improve it and get it well."
Dr Mulholland said we need to improve the way Pharmac approves a medicine's funding in a much shorter time. He added government needs to fund Pharmac properly.
Dr Malcolm Mulholland. Photo: RNZ / Jimmy Ellingham
On Monday, Associate Health Minister David Seymour told Pharmac to modernise or it would fall behind. In a letter of expectations, Seymour said to the agency to "innovate and optimise" to increase access to medicines and continue the "positive culture shift" that's been underway, such as exploring ways to "utilise AI".
His expectations also included to be more proactive in engaging with stakeholders and continue to involve patients early in the process.
The Consumer and Patient Working Group members are:
- Dr Malcolm Mulholland MNZM - Patient Voice Aotearoa
- Libby Burgess MNZM - Breast Cancer Aotearoa Coalition
- Tim Edmonds - Leukaemia and Blood Cancer NZ
- Chris Higgins - Rare Disorders NZ
- Francesca Holloway - Arthritis NZ
- Trent Lash - Heartbeats Charitable Trust
- Gerard Rushton - The Meningitis Foundation
- Rachel Smalley MNZM - The Medicine Gap
- Tracy Tierney - Epilepsy NZ
- Deon York - Haemophilia NZ
