Supply of funded medicine

18 March 2020

[name and contact details redacted]

Dear [name redacted] 

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION 

Thank you for your email of 19 February 2020, to Jane Wright of PHARMAC’s Communications Team, asking questions about the supply of funded pharmaceuticals in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.  

In your email you made a request for:

“…all PHARMAC correspondence regarding our potential responses and planning around coronavirus”

We have interpreted your request as excluding: 

• correspondence sent to PHARMAC from manufacturers or suppliers of medical devices and pharmaceuticals; and 
• correspondence relating to draft documents.

The information you requested is attached, pursuant to the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA).  This is for information up to and including the date of your request, 19 February 2020. One document dated 21 February 2020 is also included as it relates to activities prior to 19 February. 

Please note that PHARMAC approaches its assessment of requests for information under the OIA on the basis that, once released, the information becomes publicly available - in other words once we release the information to you it becomes available to any other party in that exact form (whether by you distributing it to others or by virtue of us receiving the same request from a different third party).  

We have redacted a small amount of information from the documents as follows: 

• Names of non-PHARMAC staff have been redacted as we consider this is necessary to protect the privacy of natural persons (section 9(2)(a)) 
• Direct staff contact phone numbers and email addresses for non-PHARMAC and PHARMAC staff have been redacted as we consider this is necessary to protect the privacy of natural persons (section 9(2)(a)) 

As required under the OIA, we also considered whether, in the circumstances, the withholding of this information was outweighed by other considerations which render it desirable, in the public interest, to make this information available. In this case we did not consider that the public interest outweighed the reasons for withholding the information. 

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. 

We trust that this information answers your queries. We are making our information more freely available, so we will 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 
Policy Manager, Engagement and Implementation