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Medicines access programs to cancer medicines in Australia and New Zealand: an exploratory study
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- Ireland : Elsevier Ireland Ltd, 2018.
-
Abstract
- Medicines Access Programs (MAP) offer access to publicly unfunded medicines at the discretion of pharmaceutical companies. Limited literature is available on their extent and scope in Australia and New Zealand. This study aims to identify MAPs for cancer medicines that were operational in 2014-15 in Australia and New Zealand and describe their characteristics. A preliminary list of MAPs was sent to hospital pharmacists in Australia and New Zealand to validate and collect further information. Pharmaceutical companies were contacted directly to provide information regarding MAPs offered. Key stakeholders were interviewed to identify issues with MAPs. Fifty-one MAPs were identified covering a range of indications. The majority of MAPs were provided free of charge to the patient for medicines that were registered or in the process of being registered but were not funded. Variability in the number of MAPs across institutions and characteristics was observed. Australia offered more MAPs than New Zealand. Only two of 17 pharmaceutical companies contacted agreed to provide information on their MAPs. Eight stakeholder interviews were conducted. This identified that while MAPs are widely operational there is lack of clinical monitoring, inequity to access, operational issues and lack of transparency. Our results suggest a need for a standardised and mandated policy to mitigate issues with MAPs. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Subjects :
- Compassionate Use Trials
Drug Industry
media_common.quotation_subject
pharmaceutical policy
Exploratory research
compassionate use
Antineoplastic Agents
Health Services Accessibility
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
cancer medicines
Neoplasms
Humans
030212 general & internal medicine
medicines access programs
Pharmaceutical policy
media_common
Scope (project management)
business.industry
Health Policy
Australia
Stakeholder
Public relations
Discretion
Transparency (behavior)
030220 oncology & carcinogenesis
business
New Zealand
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....6478d9557fe296f7a3ccc642902a2538