INCLUSION OF DRUGS IN THE REIMBURSEMENT SYSTEM– TRANSPARENT, EVIDENCE BASED
The meeting with the representatives of the National Health Service (NHS) sheds light on several painful current events. For example, there are still tumours or their genetic subtypes for which no drugs are reimbursed. Our priority is to ensure that tools and principles used to evaluate the relevance of medicinal products for inclusion in the reimbursement system are transparent, structured, knowledge and evidence based.
The planning and updating the list of reimbursed medicinal products, as well as the prioritizing the drugs to be included is impossible without complete data. NVD representatives’ promise – work on the new prioritization tool will be completed in the next few weeks, considering the patient’s prognosis, costs, and other factors to make the system of reimbursed drugs more favourable to those patients, who haven’t received the help before.
Equally important are patient safety aspects. The situation in which the patient must go to the pharmacy and buy the medicine himself, even though it is free, is fundamentally wrong, especially in those cases where the medicine must be provided with a cold chain and kept at a temperature of +2oC – +8oC. Is this followed and ensured, and does the patient receive a medication whose quality has not suffered because of non-compliance with the cold chain? Promise given by the NHS representatives – to analyse the situation and offer solutions within a month.