Under the Health (Pricing and Supply of Medical Goods) Act 2013, the HSE has statutory responsibility for the administration of the community drug schemes. The 2013 Health (Pricing and Supply of Medical Goods) Act is a clear, robust, statutory framework under which all new medicinal products must be assessed by the HSE. The HSE is the statutory decision-maker for the reimbursement of such products, and the Act ensures that these decisions are made on an objective and scientific basis.
The HSE Corporate Pharmaceutical Unit (CPU) is expected to deliver the best possible pricing positions in all negotiations so as to enable the HSE to reimburse as many medicines as possible, to as many patients as possible, within the resources provided to the HSE. In recent years, several steps have been taken to ensure that a high degree of communication exists between the HSE, the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics (NCPE), and the pharmaceutical industry. The HSE Executive Management Team (EMT) decides on the basis of all the demands it is faced with (across all services) whether it can fund a new medicine, or new uses of an existing medicine, from the resources that have been provided to them.
Under the Health (Pricing and Supply of Medical Goods) Act 2013, the HSE has statutory responsibility for the administration of the community drug schemes; therefore, the matter has been referred to the HSE for attention and direct reply to the Deputy.