In her new role as a member of Pharmac’s Consumer and Patient Working Group (read more here) BCAC Chair Libby Burgess attended today’s presentation by Hon David Seymour of his latest Letter of Expectations from Pharmac, which he said contained “no great change" from last year’s. The Minister acknowledged the progress the Board and staff have made over the last year in working towards his goal of making Pharmac a cutting-edge organisation that promotes additional use of medicines and technologies to improve the health and productivity of New Zealanders.
He gave recent examples of Pharmac operating in a more collegial manner, interacting with clinicians, patient advocates and pharma companies. Over the last year, Pharmac has acted on feedback from patients (estradiol dot brand change, administration of some recently funded cancer medicines in private clinics), a new Chief Executive has been appointed, and a new consumer working group has been set up. Minister Seymour commented that appointing Malcolm Mulholland as Chair of this new consumer group was an indication that this is not a ‘patsy’ group set up to endorse the status quo.
Minister Seymour stated that there is still work to do, increasing budgets, managing medical devices, and managing relationships with different stakeholders, but in all areas he believed Pharmac was “moving the dial in the right direction”. He reiterated that his goal is for Pharmac to become a “world-leading agency”.
Pharmac’s new CE, Canadian Natalie McMurtry, introduced herself via video link and there were brief presentations from Acting CE Brendan Boyle, Malcolm Mulholland and Todd Stephenson MP.
Question time provided Libby with the chance to ask Minister Seymour about revising Pharmac’s statutory purpose (to secure the best possible health outcomes from pharmaceutical treatments for eligible people, within the allocated budget), given that this is not being tackled in Minister of Health Simeon Brown’s current review of the Pae Ora Act. The Pharmac Letter of Expectation requires some work by the end of this year, which will be too late for inclusion in Brown’s review, so Libby asked Minister Seymour to get on with it. He replied that “maybe we should”; when Libby said “Just do it”, he lightheartedly asked the press in the room to note that this was “democracy in action”.
In answer to questions from others, Seymour stated that his focus as Associate Minister of Health remains on improving patients’ experiences of the health system, not in administrative re-organisation or ideologically driven change.
21 July 2025
