Posted by Michael Wonder on 17 Dec 2019
Lamotrigine NPPA change
17 December 2019 - The request seeks all ‘communications’ between members of the PHARMAC senior leadership team, and in anticipation that you are seeking to understand the decision-making process leading to the announcement we think it is useful to describe the verbal engagements between senior leadership team members that resulted in PHARMAC’s decision to widen access to the exceptional circumstances process for lamotrigine.
On 14 November 2019, PHARMAC’s Acting Medical Director, Dr Ken Clark and Director of Operations, Lisa Williams, discussed the impact of the media coverage and social media commentary that had been occurring since the publication of Medsafe advisory alert on 12 November.
They agreed that, although PHARMAC already had in place an exceptional circumstances process to enable ongoing funding of previous brands for people unable to change and almost 90 applications had been received, in the context of the level of public concern being expressed the volume of applications had been relatively low.
