Submissions to the March 2025 meeting of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee

Page last updated: 24 October 2024

The Department of Health and Aged Care has received notification that pharmaceutical companies plan to bring forward more than 50 major submissions for consideration at the March 2025 meeting of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC).

This is an unprecedented number and exceeds both the current capacity of the contracted Health Technology Assessment (HTA) workforce for evaluation, and the number the PBAC can consider in one meeting.  The Department does not control the number of submissions brought forward by sponsoring pharmaceutical companies and on very rare occasions – a handful in the past 10 years - the number has exceeded evaluation capacity.

The Department has contacted existing and additional providers of HTA evaluation services but there is not enough capacity available to be able to consider all the submissions at the March meeting.  It will therefore be necessary to consider some of the submissions at a later meeting. 

PBAC’s decision to hold over some of the submissions to a later meeting has been taken very carefully given the potential implications for patients, clinicians and sponsors. In selecting submissions for the March 2025 agenda, the PBAC used its clinical judgment and experience, providing a consistent and standard approach across all submissions. This patient-centred approach considered: clinical need, high added therapeutic value and the nature of the condition.

Submissions held over from March 2025 will be considered at the PBAC’s July 2025 meeting subject to submission volume and capacity for that meeting.

The Department has written to all of the affected companies as well as Medicines Australia.  We will be keeping in close contact as we progress these issues.