Medicines Access Coalition - BC
(formerly the better pharmacare coalition)
Medicines Access Coalition – BC (MedAccess BC) brings together patient organizations from across BC and across Canada to be a dominant and unified voice to bring awareness, education, attention and change as necessary to improve access to medicines leading to improved health outcomes for the people of BC.
As a coalition, we interact with many stakeholders who participate or influence the decisions directly affecting the access to medicines including, policy makers, government, researchers, academics, health practitioners, public and private health payers, benefit managers/consultants, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and others who play a role in the access to medicines.
Evidence Based Medicine For Better Patient Care
We aim to be the leader in advocating for better access to medicines in BC by providing a unified voice of many patient care organizations.
Since being established in 1997, we have expanded our scope and effectiveness to be a significant resource to non-profit and charitable patient organization members and we advocate for improved access to safe and effective medicines through ensuring awareness of issues, delivering stakeholder activities, conducting research, providing education, and supporting our members.
What We Do?
Working together we aim to:
Increase access to new medicines and technologies
Provide greater control and choice for patients
Create a more transparent drug review and approval process with public participation
Explore Issues
- All
- therapeutic options
- drug review
- drug safety
- cost effectiveness
- transparency
- pharmaceutical pricing
For Transparency
Drug Pharmaceutical policy development, including drug review decisions, must be accessible and open to the general public, patients and all physicians.
For Patient Access
Physicians are best suited to making decisions about the treatment needs of their patients as they fully understand the disease history and the clinical implications of treatment.
For Drug Review, Safety
Decisions about drug safety are an integral and ongoing part of the review process, and must incorporate all relevant stakeholders, including specialist physicians, epidemiologists and patients.
For Pharmaceutical Pricing and
Drug pricing must be in line with other provincial and territorial jurisdictions and must respect the balance between best price and patient needs.
For Patient Access
Physicians are best suited to making decisions about the treatment needs of their patients as they fully understand the disease history and the clinical implications of treatment.