The Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB) released today the third and final part in the Alignment Among Public Formularies in Canada series, which explores the current gaps and overlaps in Canadian public drug plan formularies.
This report compares formulary coverage across Canada's public drug plans for 307 medicines reviewed by the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH)'s Common Drug Review (CDR) process between December 16, 2003, and June 30, 2019. The analysis also looks at listing and agreement rates in specific market segments, including biologic and small molecule medicines, single- and multi-source medicines, and expensive drugs for rare diseases.
The findings from this report show that reimbursement for CDR-reviewed medicines is fairly consistent across most of Canada's public drug plans. Individually, provinces listed an average of 65% of the selected medicines and 88% when corresponding sales were factored in, which indicates that the medicines not covered by the plans accounted for only a small share of national sales. These listing rates varied only slightly across the market segments analyzed. Most notably, with the exception of a few smaller public drug programs, listing rates for expensive drugs for rare diseases were higher than those for other CDR medicines.
