MSAC considers application (MSAC meeting)

What you need to know

We meet to consider your application and provide advice on funding. This includes:

• the ratified PICO confirmation (if applicable)
• the assessment report
• the commentary or overview paper
• the rejoinder (if applicable)
• any advice from ESC
• your pre-MSAC response – this is your ESC report response or overview paper response
• any consultation input on your application, including input from:
  • targeted and public consultations
  • stakeholder forums
  • state and territory governments and other committees or groups (if applicable)
• other relevant information, including advice from invited experts and department officers.

• If you withdraw your application after appraisal

  If you withdraw your application after we have finished appraising it, our secretariat will decide to either:

  • withhold our advice
  • publish our advice in part or in full in a public summary document.

  In most cases, our secretariat will publish the public summary document for transparency.

  We may also provide our advice to the federal health minister.

• Integrated codependent applications – PBAC also considers your application

  If your application is integrated codependent, both our committee and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) will meet to consider your application.

  PBAC will meet about 3 weeks before us and raise questions as needed for us to consider.

• HST applications – state and territory health officials may attend the meeting

  If your application is for a high cost, highly specialised therapy (HST), state and territory health officials may attend as observers at the MSAC meeting when we consider your application.

What you need to do

If there is no hearing for your application, you do not need to do anything in this step.

If we initiated a hearing, or our secretariat agreed to your request for a hearing, the representatives for your application can attend for that part of the meeting.

Attend the hearing

The representatives for your application can attend the 10-minute hearing by phone or video conference. The representatives cannot be present during our deliberations on your application.

You are responsible for any costs related to attending the hearing.

Outcome and next steps

At the meeting, we will decide to either:

• support funding
• partially support funding
  (This means we support your application under certain conditions. For example, we may support funding for your application on the condition of a risk-sharing agreement, or only support funding for certain population groups or scenarios.)
• not support funding
• defer our advice
  (This means we need extra information before we can finalise our advice. For example, we may need advice from other committees for codependent applications or confirmation on regulatory approvals.)
• provide other advice
  (For example, where we have been asked to conduct a review of a medical service or technology, which may or may not include a funding component.)

Our secretariat will inform the federal health minister or relevant government bodies about our decision after the meeting.

The next step is to notify you of the outcome.

Contact

Contact your application manager or our secretariat if you have any questions.