Hurdles in Health Basket & Reimbursement for 2021
The Israeli National Health Basket (reimbursement) of drugs and technologies is updated annually since 1995.
Now, there are delays in Health Basket & Reimbursement for 2021.
Recent annual additional budget was set at ~500 Million NIS .
Approved drugs and technologies are reimbursed.
The Israeli Ministry of Health (MoH) issued a call for proposals in end of January 2020, with submission deadline by 25th of February.
About 400 applications for drugs, medical foods and of non pharmaceutical technologies have been submitted for inclusion.
However, there are significant hurdles as till end of August 2020, the Health Basket committe, which assesses and provides the recommendations for inclusion, has not yet been nominated !!
That is critical and may impact the process timings and delay approval of new drugs and technologies..
In addition, the annual budget for the 2021 has not been set.
It is expected that the chairman of the committee will be a new nomination, and not last year’s chair prof. Rotshtein.
Patient groups and associations, physicians associations, pharma companies and medical devices companies are very concerned with the delays in Health Basket & Reimbursement process for 2021.
There is a new Minister of Health, MP Yuli Edelstein and a new vice, MP Yoav Kish. The positive news are that Mr. Edelstein insists on meeting the regular timelines, i.e. by January 2021
Inclusion of drugs and technologies in the National Health Basket is key to making their drug or technology available to patients and to their marketing success.
More updates will follow on this topic!
!!September 15th 2020 update:
NO budget yet, but Committe members have been nominated.
Prof. Shuki Shemer is the new chairman of health basket committe.
Prof. Shemer is chairman of Assuta medical centers, previously managing director of Ministry of Health, who headed the first Health BAsket Committee back in 1998.
Other new members include: Dr. Suhir Asdi, Prof. Izhak Shapira, Prof. Ilana Herman, Dr. Gadi Noyman, Dr. Lior Kazap
!!November 15th 2020 update:
Kick off – First meeting held on October 28th…
Commeetti’s meetings are planned to become virtual via Zoom. For the first time, due to Covid limitations, it is considered not to allow media to attend / cover the meetings. Temporarily, two media representatives can wait in a side room.
About 880 drugs and thechnologies are expected to be discussed by year end. Their cost is ~3B nis. No budget allocated yet.
!!December 24th 2020 update:
No budget allocated yet.…!!!
The decisions/ reccomendations are due in a week and NO BUDGET decided/ allocated yet.
The Minister asks for 650M, but treasury indicates a cut to 300M NIS.
A very unusual year.
!!December 30th 2020 update:
Finally – A budget has been allocated – 550M NIS.
50M more than previous years, less then the expected 750M. For a COVID-19 year, with ots impact on lives and budgets it is a reasonable rise.
Here is more information about The National Health Basket updating process.
The call for proposals for 2022 Health Basket is due in January 2021.
It is a good time to start preparing for it.
Mind Pharma provides Health Basket & Reimbursement application services and has vast knowledge and experience in leading such applications.
Need more information? Contact us here.
Mind Pharma provides Appointed Pharmacist , Responsible Pharmacist – Qualified Person (QP) & batch release , Qualified Person Pharmacovigilance (QP-PV) , Market access and Market Insight support and Medical Director services.
We also support establishing quality assurance system management, writing SOPs, audits, mock audits, quality and technical agreements.