There is an average waiting time of 7.7 years for Pharmac funding applications to be processed, according to a new report from Medicines New Zealand.
The report revealed there was an average wait time of almost six years for applications currently on the Options for Investment (OFI) list, which are medicines and treatments not yet available in the country.
Several medicines still awaiting decisions are used for "severe health needs", which accounts for 72% of funding applications on the OFI list.
"However, the need level did not appear to correlate with the likelihood of achieving a funding decision unless it was extreme," the report said.
Speaking to Breakfast this morning, Medicine New Zealand's Graeme Jarvis said Aotearoa is twice as slow as other countries in the OECD to fund medicines.
"It's concerning that we're not getting them [the medicines] into the health system which is already under crisis to help resolve some of the issues we've got."
He said while Pharmac are at the forefront of the report, it's actually the Government who needs to solve the problem.
"The concern is not so much with Pharmac, it's actually with the Government. The Government's got to make a call on what it wants to do and what a plan is to actually help resolve this issue, because these are standard of care products and medicines that are used elsewhere in the world.
"It's not really Pharmac's responsibility about the budget, it's the Government that needs to help them fund these medicines and get to them to the right patients at the right time."
Also speaking to Breakfast this morning, Pharmac's Lisa Williams said the report hasn't revealed anything new, instead confirming what the company already knew.
"Pharmaceutical companies take a longer period of time to bring their products to New Zealand and that Pharmac assessment timeframes are not where we would want them to be."
Williams also said the wait time of 7.7 years talked about in the report isn't entirely accurate.
"The numbers that we're talking about are average times that things are sitting on our lists on our waitlist. It's not the average time that it takes for things to be funded.
"So we measure that and we started measuring that a couple of years ago, and reporting publicly on it, so the average time for the last couple of years for how long it takes us to make a decision on something that we do fund is just over two years."
Williams said Pharmac "isn't where it wants to be" but is working within a fixed budget, which means trade off decisions have to be made.
"That means that some things will get funded faster than others and that inevitably impacts on timeframes."
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