Pharmac Continues To Engage With Consumers
Associate Education Minister David Seymour welcomes the establishment of Pharmac's new consumer working group to help Pharmac help reset how it works with health consumers.
"For many New Zealanders, funding for pharmaceuticals is life or death, or the difference between a life of pain and suffering or living freely,' Mr Seymour says.
'My expectation is that Pharmac should have good processes to ensure that people with an illness, their carers and family, can provide input to decision-making processes. This is part of the ACT-National Coalition Agreement.
'Pharmac hosted a Consumer Engagement Workshop in March. Patients and advocates voiced their hopes at resetting the patient – Pharmac relationship. Pharmac published a report on the findings from the workshop.
'The report recommended that the Board invite workshop participants, in association with the wider consumer-patient representative community, to select a working group. The group would work with Pharmac's Board and management to reset the relationship between Pharmac and the consumer/representative community.
'The patient advocacy community selected Dr Malcolm Mulholland to lead the consumer working group. He has worked with consumers to select the other members of the working group. These members represent patients with a wide range of health conditions. They are named at the end of this release.'
'We've waited a long time for this opportunity. The work that Pharmac does is vitally important for the health of patients and their families, and this is why getting Pharmac to work as well as it can, will be the focus of the working group,' Dr Mulholland says.
'The consumer working group met for the first time yesterday to confirm the approach for the reset programme and agree the first set of actions. I look forward to hearing about their progress,' Mr Seymour says.
'I'm pleased to see the Board take the opportunity to continue to prioritise expanding opportunities and access for patients and their families by expanding access to more medicines for more groups.
'The working group reflects our commitment to a more adaptable and patient-centred approach. It follows my letters of expectations, the consumer engagement workshop, last year's Medicines Summit, and the acceptance of Patient Voice Aotearoa's White Paper as actions to achieve this.
'The Government is doing its part. Last year we allocated Pharmac its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, and a $604 million uplift to give Pharmac the financial support it needs to carry out its functions - negotiating the best deals for medicine for New Zealanders.'
The consumer working group members are:
Dr Malcolm Mulholland MNZM – Patient Voice Aotearoa
Libby Burgess MNZM – Breast Cancer Aotearoa Coalition
Tim Edmonds – Leukaemia and Blood Cancer NZ
Chris Higgins – Rare Disorders NZ
Francesca Holloway – Arthritis NZ
Trent Lash – Heartbeats Charitable Trust
Gerard Rushton – The Meningitis Foundation
Rachel Smalley MNZM – The Medicine Gap
Tracy Tierney – Epilepsy NZ
Deon York – Haemophilia NZ
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