DREC and Cancer Committee to convene more on-paper meetings

Relevant regulation to be revised to accommodate COVID-19-like environmental changes and to match other committee regulations

The South Korean government is to alleviate on-paper deliberations related regulation for the first threshold of pharmaceutical reimbursement listing—the Drug Reimbursement Evaluation Committee (DREC) and Cancer Deliberation Committee.

 

The Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) preannounced partially revised managerial regulation on the committee that loosens and amends on-paper review regulations.

 

Relevant public opinions would be accepted until Sept.

 

7.

 

HIRA regularly convenes DREC meeting on every first Thursday of a month, and Cancer Deliberation Committee has scheduled eight meetings for the rest of the year.

 

Amid COVID-19 pandemic, however, DREC and Cancer Committee meetings were postponed or delayed the decision making on drug reimbursement listing due to the regulation limiting on-paper review to two consecutive times.

 

As a result, patients and pharmaceutical companies’ complains have snowballed.

 

Accordingly, HIRA has decided to alleviate the on-paper review regulation stipulated in DREC and Cancer Committee managerial regulations.

 

The current regulation stipulates, ‘a deliberation can be conducted on-paper, in case of urgent or non-critical case, but the on-paper review and deliberation cannot be conducted more than two consecutive times.’ The newly revised regulation would allow on-paper review and deliberation ‘in case the committee chair decides an in-person meeting cannot be convened for urgent or unavoidable reasons, or more than one-third of the registered committees have requested for on-paper deliberation with the attached No.

 

9 template.’ HIRA official stated, “The on-paper deliberation related regulation would be alleviated to efficiently operate the committees,” and “the revisions were made based on similar regulations in other Expert Evaluation Committees.” When finalized, the latest amendment aims to improve the continuity of tasks such as drug listing or reimbursement expansion, when in-person review is unfeasible due to a threat to public health like COVID-19.