medicines

Mental Health Australia’s submission to the Review of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee’s guidelines.

Medicines play an important part in the maintenance and treatment of mental illness and the MHCA has a keen interest in the governance structures which oversee the conduct of the Australian innovative pharmaceutical sector. In this submission the MHCA promotes consumer and carer engagement as effective strategies to include in the Medicines Australia Code of Conduct.

The MHCA focus for this submission is on Cabinet’s proposal to become the decision-making body for approving all Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme listings. The MHCA makes a number of recommendations to ensure that a high level of equity, accountability and transparency is maintained in Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee processes.

The MHCA commends the Therapeutic Goods Administration for examining methods to improve transparency of regulatory processes and looks forward to further work in this area. The TGA needs to be open to the input of stakeholders, particularly consumers and carers, to ensure it is catering to their information needs. Mechanisms for stakeholder input beyond invitations to respond to a review should be examined.