RESOURCES
Medicine access & health equity related resources.
Supporting Documents
This section offers a range of materials and tools that can help individuals navigate the role co-payment plays in the healthcare system and stay up-to-date on the latest developments in health equity policy and advocacy.
Better healthcare for all: Community pharmacy staff on the effects of universal fees-free prescriptions
PAI ICPG Community Pharmacy Survey
The survey responses described how universal fees-free prescriptions are enabling a more effective, efficient primary healthcare service, and how National’s targeting plan would be destabilising for the sector, putting services and capacity in jeopardy for all patients, whether or not they are paying prescription fees.
“It is devastating”: ‘Patient
co-payment’ prescription fees
and their effect on communities,
as witnessed by community
pharmacists
PAI ICPG Community Pharmacy Survey
This report shines new light on how some of these preventable hospsitalisations come about, as well as other less visible effects of the fee, by presenting survey responses from community pharmacists about the prescription fees’ effects on their own communities.
Impact of removing prescription co-payments on the use of costly health services: a pragmatic randomised controlled trial. Norris, P., Cousins, K., Horsburgh, S. et al
The study shows eliminating a small co-payment appears to have had a substantial effect on patients' risk of being hospitalised. Given the small amount of revenue gathered from the charges, and the comparative large costs of hospitalisations, the results suggest that these charges are likely to increase the overall cost of healthcare, as well as exacerbate ethnic inequalities.
Rapidly improve community health via Fees-Free Prescriptions for All Independent Community Pharmacy Group Position Paper, March 2023
The patient co-payment fee on prescriptions is harming physical and mental
health and wellbeing, by increasing health crises, pain, shame, and unnecessary
hospitalisations around the country. Removing this government-imposed healthcare barrier
for everyone would increase access to basic medicines, producing immediate positive
effects for community health, and reducing the burden on our over-extended healthcare
system.
Pharmacy Whakamahere: Understanding the pharmacy needs of our population 2023
New Zealand Ministry of Health
This report has been produced to document and highlight the valuable information gained during the consumer engagement phase of the Pharmacy Whakamahere project. It is knowledge that can be shared with the wider pharmacy sector to highlight the very real issues shared by consumers, and to help inform improvements and change moving forward.