Reimbursement Doesn’t Mean Patients Can Access a Drug

The push towards value-based is changing the reimbursement landscape. However, this hasn’t meant there’s an increase in access to NHS patients in the UK. Instead, novel therapeutics are still out of reach for many. In a new PM Live article, Toby Gunner of Nzyme group describes the disconnect between patient access and reimbursement status.

According to Gunner, “Increasingly we see companies gaining reimbursement for innovative therapies through the various reimbursement routes and accelerated access channels, only to see limited patient access. In extreme cases we are seeing charities provide bursaries to hospitals to ensure patients receive new therapies. This clearly limits patient access and prohibits equity of access. Why is this? The simple answer is COVID-19. As an accelerant to the capacity crisis in the NHS, it is unprecedented. The reality is, however, the NHS has been prioritising restructuring to a value-based healthcare system for some time, as the current system became increasingly unsustainable.”

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(Source: PM Live, October 19th)