News
HST Collects relevant news from a variety of sources, for your convenience. Select a story from below, or use our search feature to find stories of interest.

State to divulge drug-fee details
Tamar Kahn, Science and Health Editor - Business Day
2007-04-20

The health department has agreed to provide the pharmacy industry's lawyers with documents and videos detailing how its pricing committee set the pharmacists' dispensing fee, avoiding a public confrontation over the matter in court.

The development is important because the material will enable the pharmacists' lawyers to assess whether the pricing committee complied with a 2005 Constitutional Court order compelling it to develop an appropriate fee for pharmacists. 

Martin Versveld, one of the lawyers representing the Pharmaceutical Society of SA, the South African Progressive Pharmacists Association, and United South African Pharmacists, confirmed yesterday that the agreement for access to the pricing committee's deliberations on the revised dispensing fee had been made through a court order. The department had agreed to provide almost all the material requested by the pharmacists' lawyers, including videos of industry presentations, written submissions and minutes of deliberations, he said. 

Lawyers for the department and the pharmacists had also agreed on a timetable for further legal proceedings, suggesting a court hearing was likely only in the second half of this year.

Keywords	This Item is associated with the Following Keywords: .
You Can Comment on this Item, or View other people's Comments
Easy Print  Email to a friend