Average pharmaceutical rebate percentages (%) per financial year

Thank you for your request dated 24 November 2021 under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) for information relating to pharmaceutical rebates. You requested: 

(1) Please provide the average percentage (%) confidential rebate given by the pharmaceutical industry for each financial year for the last five (5) financial years from 2016/17 up to and including 2020/21 i.e. not as a consolidated five-year average.  

NB: In calculating the average percentage (%) rebate we request that it is only calculated across the list of pharmaceuticals that have confidential rebates

i.e. not calculated across the entire pharmaceutical portfolio/schedule. 

2) Please provide the list of the pharmaceuticals for each financial year from 2016/17 up to and including 2020/21 that have a confidential rebate attached to their procurement by PHARMAC. That list should be provided for each financial year for the last five (5) financial years and not as a consolidated list 

The table below outlines the average rebate (%) for the pharmaceuticals that the rebates apply to, for the most recent five financial years. 

Please refer to the excel workbook attached for a list of pharmaceuticals which had a rebate applied in each of the most recent five financial years.

Average pharmaceutical rebate percentages (%) per financial year

Financial year

Average rebate percentage

2016/17 42.14%
2017/18 44.09%
2018/19 46.95%
2019/20 45.87%
2020/21 48.34%

Notes

  • The data is provided for the period from 01/07/2016 to 30/06/2021. Pharmac's financial year runs from 1 July to 30 June.
  • The pharmaceutical rebates have been extracted where there has been a rebate payment of greater than zero dollars made by a supplier in the corresponding financial year.
  • The average percentage (%) rebate calculation does not include pharmaceuticals for which a rebate payment has not been received.
  • The data provided includes community pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical cancer treatments and haemophilia pharmaceuticals only. The data does not include Hospital (HML) only pharmaceuticals.
  • The data does not include pharmaceuticals where a discount has been applied on invoice rather than a rebate being paid (for example, treatments for hepatitis C and vaccines). Discounted pharmaceuticals have not been included because this it would require extensive resource to identify and collate discount data.

We trust that this information answers your queries. We are making our information more freely available, so we now publish selected OIA responses (excluding personal details) on our website. Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about this.