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Identifying priority medicines policy issues for New Zealand: a general inductive study

OBJECTIVES: To identify priority medicines policy issues for New Zealand. SETTING: Stakeholders from a broad range of healthcare and policy institutions including primary, secondary and tertiary care. PARTICIPANTS: Exploratory, semistructured interviews were conducted with 20 stakeholders throughout...

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Autores principales: Babar, Zaheer-Ud-Din, Francis, Susan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4039830/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24871535
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2013-004415
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author Babar, Zaheer-Ud-Din
Francis, Susan
author_facet Babar, Zaheer-Ud-Din
Francis, Susan
author_sort Babar, Zaheer-Ud-Din
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVES: To identify priority medicines policy issues for New Zealand. SETTING: Stakeholders from a broad range of healthcare and policy institutions including primary, secondary and tertiary care. PARTICIPANTS: Exploratory, semistructured interviews were conducted with 20 stakeholders throughout New Zealand. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: The interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed and coded into INVIVO 10, then compared and grouped for similarity of theme. Perceptions, experiences and opinions regarding New Zealand's medicines policy issues were recorded. RESULTS: A large proportion of stakeholders appeared to be unaware of New Zealand's (NZ) medicines policy. In general, the policy was considered to offer consistency to guide decision-making. In the context of Pharmaceutical Management Agency's (PHARMAC's) fixed budget for procuring and subsidising medicines, there was reasonable satisfaction with the range of medicines available—rare disorder medicines being the clear exception. Concerns raised were by whom and how decisions are made and whether desired health outcomes are being measured. Other concerns included inconsistencies in evidence and across health technologies. Despite attempts to improve the situation, lower socioeconomic groups (including rural residents) Māori and Pacific ethnicities and people with rare disorders face challenges with regards to accessing medicines. Other barriers include, convenience to and affordability of prescribers and the increase of prescription fees from NZ$3 to NZ$5. Concerns related to the PHARMAC of New Zealand included: a constraining budget; non-transparency of in-house analysis; lack of consistency in recommendations between the Pharmacology and Therapeutics Advisory Committee. Constraints and inefficiencies also exist in the submission process to access high-cost medicines. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest reasonable satisfaction with the availability of subsidised medicines. However, some of the major challenges include access to medicines in vulnerable groups, increasing costs and demand for new medicines, access to prescribers, budgetary constraints, cultural and health literacy, patient affordability and evidence requirement for gaining subsidy for medicines.
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spelling pubmed-40398302014-06-02 Identifying priority medicines policy issues for New Zealand: a general inductive study Babar, Zaheer-Ud-Din Francis, Susan BMJ Open Public Health OBJECTIVES: To identify priority medicines policy issues for New Zealand. SETTING: Stakeholders from a broad range of healthcare and policy institutions including primary, secondary and tertiary care. PARTICIPANTS: Exploratory, semistructured interviews were conducted with 20 stakeholders throughout New Zealand. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: The interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed and coded into INVIVO 10, then compared and grouped for similarity of theme. Perceptions, experiences and opinions regarding New Zealand's medicines policy issues were recorded. RESULTS: A large proportion of stakeholders appeared to be unaware of New Zealand's (NZ) medicines policy. In general, the policy was considered to offer consistency to guide decision-making. In the context of Pharmaceutical Management Agency's (PHARMAC's) fixed budget for procuring and subsidising medicines, there was reasonable satisfaction with the range of medicines available—rare disorder medicines being the clear exception. Concerns raised were by whom and how decisions are made and whether desired health outcomes are being measured. Other concerns included inconsistencies in evidence and across health technologies. Despite attempts to improve the situation, lower socioeconomic groups (including rural residents) Māori and Pacific ethnicities and people with rare disorders face challenges with regards to accessing medicines. Other barriers include, convenience to and affordability of prescribers and the increase of prescription fees from NZ$3 to NZ$5. Concerns related to the PHARMAC of New Zealand included: a constraining budget; non-transparency of in-house analysis; lack of consistency in recommendations between the Pharmacology and Therapeutics Advisory Committee. Constraints and inefficiencies also exist in the submission process to access high-cost medicines. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest reasonable satisfaction with the availability of subsidised medicines. However, some of the major challenges include access to medicines in vulnerable groups, increasing costs and demand for new medicines, access to prescribers, budgetary constraints, cultural and health literacy, patient affordability and evidence requirement for gaining subsidy for medicines. BMJ Publishing Group 2014-05-28 /pmc/articles/PMC4039830/ /pubmed/24871535 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2013-004415 Text en Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 3.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
spellingShingle Public Health
Babar, Zaheer-Ud-Din
Francis, Susan
Identifying priority medicines policy issues for New Zealand: a general inductive study
title Identifying priority medicines policy issues for New Zealand: a general inductive study
title_full Identifying priority medicines policy issues for New Zealand: a general inductive study
title_fullStr Identifying priority medicines policy issues for New Zealand: a general inductive study
title_full_unstemmed Identifying priority medicines policy issues for New Zealand: a general inductive study
title_short Identifying priority medicines policy issues for New Zealand: a general inductive study
title_sort identifying priority medicines policy issues for new zealand: a general inductive study
topic Public Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4039830/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24871535
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2013-004415
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