Details of Pharmac’s active investments
21 June 2021
Dear [name and contact details withheld]
REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
Thank you for your request dated 7 June 2021 under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) for information relating to PHARMAC’s active investments. You requested:
Details of all of Pharmac's active investments, including a description of each investment, the date entered into and the value in NZD as at 08 June 2021.
PHARMAC currently funds over 1,300 unique chemicals[1] and up to 3,000 line items via the Pharmaceutical Schedule.
Due to the large number of active investments, we have refused to provide the information you have requested as to do so would require substantial research and collation and would impact on our ability to fulfil our usual obligations (section 18(f) of the OIA). However, we have provided some information below which may assist with answering your request.
As required under the OIA, we have considered whether charging for the information requested or extending the time limit for our response would assist us in meeting your request. In this circumstance, we do not consider that this would assist us to fulfil your request.
Please note you have the right, by way of complaint under section 28(3) of the OIA to an Ombudsman, to seek an investigation and review of our decision.
Pharmaceutical Schedule resources
The Online Schedule is publicly accessible and provides details of funded chemicals including the funded brand (if applicable), medicine form (eg tablet, oral liquid, etc) and the list price (gross price per funded pack).
We have also included downloadable Excel (xlsx) versions of the Community and Hospital Schedules via the Schedule resources(external link) page of our website: www.pharmac.govt.nz > Pharmaceutical Schedule > Schedule Resources
Year in Review reports
Every year, we produce a Year in Review (YIR) which highlights impacts and insights from work undertaken in the previous financial year[2]. The YIR includes summaries of the top 20 medicines by Therapeutic Group gross spend, top 20 community medicines by number of funded prescriptions dispensed, and top 20 hospital medicines by gross spend.
A full history of our Year in Review reports (previously ‘Annual Review’) is available on our website: www.pharmac.govt.nz > About > What we do > Accountability information
Prescription and dispensing information for funded chemicals
The Ministry of Health hosts the Pharmaceutical data web tool which currently contains information about prescriptions and dispensings provided for most funded pharmaceuticals between 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2019.
The Pharmaceutical data web tool is publicly available and can be accessed via https://minhealthnz.shinyapps.io/pharmaceutical-data-web-tool(external link)
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.
Yours sincerely
Rachel Read
Manager, Policy and Government Services
[1] Combined total of unique chemicals listed in Community (Section B) and Hospital (Section H) Schedules. Chemicals listed in both Community and Hospital are counted as a single chemical.
[2] PHARMAC’s financial year runs from 1 July to 30 June.