Industry supports greater PBAC transparency

Medicines Australia 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-in-confidence issues.

“Industry supports this increase in transparency because it makes sense, it’s practical, it’s meaningful and it serves a real purpose for the end user – the consumer.

“It’s an example of what can be achieved when stakeholders work collaboratively with industry on an important policy issue.

“Some years ago, 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.”

The agenda for the upcoming March 2014 PBAC meeting can be found at: http://pbs.gov.au/info/industry/listing/elements/pbac-meetings/agenda

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