Patient advocates: Pharmac has been 'starved of funding' for years

Patient advocates say yesterday's funding boost announcement is welcome, but needs to go further to address New Zealand falling behind the rest of the developed world.

The Government announced yesterday a $1.7 billion increase for the country's drug buying agency Pharmac to more than $6 billion over four years.

A deal to reform the Pharmac funding model was part of ACT's coalition agreement with National, while New Zealand First and National also agreed to increase funding for Pharmac every year.

Patient Voice Aotearoa chairman Malcolm Mulholland told Breakfast that Pharmac had been "starved of funding for near on two decades" and that the problems would likely only get worse if not addressed.

"The government will receive more petitions, there will be more Givealittle pages set up, there will be more cancer patients and patients across the board pouring their hearts out in media saying 'please save my life'."

He noted the boost was a "good start" but said it needed to go further to form a plan moving forward to clear the drug waiting list.

"Pharmac has about another 280 drugs currently being assessed through their system. A lot of those drugs are now quite old, so we no longer have confidence or knowledge whether or not they're the 'best in class' as they've been sitting there so long."

Mulholland said he was encouraged by the "spirit of collaboration" at yesterday's meeting, where stakeholders met with Associate Health Minister David Seymour and newly-appointed Pharmac board chairperson Paula Bennett.

"Yesterday we held the first National Medicines Summit and Ms Bennett was there the entire day. So she was hearing firsthand a lot of the concerns stakeholders had about the culture of Pharmac.

"What I would like to see moving forward is more opportunities like that for stakeholders to meet and engage directly with the Government including the Minister, he was there for the announcement, because that's the only way we're going to get to the bottom of New Zealand's medicine crisis."

Mulholland was calling for a patient-centred focus that ensured the patient voice was heard throughout Pharmac's decision making process.

"So, how might we be able to improve Pharmac's process so that they're talking to us so that we're not left out in the cold and there's a lack of transparency when the decision is made."

Mulholland said the groups also discussed the tools Pharmac might use in order to assess a drug.

"Right now we're one of the very few countries in the developed world that doesn't use a societal perspective. We're arguing the point that we think that if Pharmac were to implement that, [it] would probably see more drugs funded in a faster pace."

Ah-Leen Rayner, chief executive of Breast Cancer Foundation NZ, said the announcement was a "really positive step in the right direction" but added the organisation needed "transformational change".

"The Government heard our concerns loud and clear, we know that the 'options for invest' list really needs clearing and we would be hopeful and very supportive of any investment into Pharmac on top of what they announced yesterday."

She said the Cancer Foundation hoped the upcoming budget would further increase funding to address modern medicines.

"However, we know there is significantly more needed to reform Pharmac to actually enable patients the access to modern medicines and drugs that are freely available in other countries around the world."

Rayner said the reality was people suffering from triple negative breast cancer faced a "significant burden" mentally and physically, on top of patients potentially having to spend thousands to self-fund treatment.

"Currently ,there are no funded drugs for triple negative breast cancer patients here in New Zealand.

"What these women are left with is fundraising, or they move to Australia, or simply go without access to this life-saving medication."