PBAC transparency hailed
January 7, 2014
Medicines Australia (MA) has
welcomed the extended 10 week
publication time for the agenda for
Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory
Committee meetings that comes
into effect today.
The agenda for each PBAC
meeting will now be published
10 weeks prior to the meeting, as
opposed to the six weeks that had
been normal practice until today.
“Medicines Australia supports the
longer time period of publication
of the PBAC agenda prior to each
meeting,” said Medicines Australia
chief executive, Dr Brendan Shaw.
“It means consumers, consumer
groups, and members of the
general public will now have more
time to prepare submissions
and make comments to the
PBAC on new medicines and
vaccines seeking listing on the
Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
“Industry has worked with
government, technical experts
and patient groups to secure this
improvement to the PBAC system.
“This included having to manage
important commercial-inconfidence
issues.
“Some years ago,” Shaw added,
“industry worked with government
and consumer groups to have the
PBAC agenda published which was
a real innovation at the time.
“Now we have agreed to publish
the agenda earlier to give people
more time to input into the PBAC
process.”
CLICK HERE for the March 2014
PBAC meeting agenda.
The above article was sent to subscribers in Pharmacy Daily's issue from 07 Jan 14To see the full newsletter, see the embedded issue below or CLICK HERE to download Pharmacy Daily from 07 Jan 14
