Evaluating New Medicines for Use in Australian Hospitals: Lessons from North America

Abstract

ABSTRACTSeveral centres were visited in North America to identify strategies that could improve the processes used by Australian hospitals when evaluating new medicines for clinical and economic benefits. The centres visited included hospitals, a managed care organisation and the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health. All of the hospitals visited used a formulary to manage medicines and took a similar approach to evaluating new medicines for formulary listing and monitoring decisions. The institutional pharmacy and therapeutics committees were responsible for decision‐making and were guided by detailed drug monographs prepared by pharmacy staff. There was limited use of pharmacoeconomic data in decision‐making. Resources used to guide decision‐making included standard guidelines for formulary submission, comparative effectiveness reviews and a checklist. A more consistent and rigorous approach to assessing medicines and determining cost‐effectiveness could be achieved in Australian hospitals by using a standard format for submissions. Australian drug and therapeutics committees' members need to be educated about the utility of pharmacoeconomic studies in the evaluation of new medicines.