IVD Australia welcomes initiatives set forward by the government

IVD Australia has welcomed the agreement between the government and the pathology sector on the ongoing funding of pathology services.

CEO Dr Peter Harman said that “IVD Australia supports the agreement between the government and the pathology sector as it will provide certainty to IVD suppliers regarding funding going forward. We especially welcome the commitment to improving the transparency for setting and reviewing pathology fees, as well as the new role for the Medical Services Advisory Committee (MSAC) in assessing the cost effectiveness of new pathology tests. This will mean Australian health consumers may now be able to access the rapidly developing personalised medicine and genomic tests that are available overseas, as well as the point-of-care tests that can be provided in GP surgeries.

“However, there must be a dramatic improvement in the time taken to assess new tests and technology. At present it can take over four years to get a new assay approved for reimbursement and in that time, given the rapid advancement in IVD technology, it may already be obsolete,” he said.

IVD Australia also welcomed the establishment of the Pathology Agreement Advisory Committee but called on the Minister to ensure it was not restricted to just the AAPP, RCPA and NCOPP.

“The department has traditionally negotiated with the RCPA and the private and public pathology providers,” said Dr Harman. “However, pathology reagents and instrumentation tests supplied principally by IVD Australia members comprise over 25% of the costs of pathology laboratories. Much of the containment in the cost of pathology testing over the past 20 years has derived from the advances in automation and test technology provided to laboratories by IVD Australia members. In this context we believe it is absolutely essential that IVD Australia be included by the department whenever and wherever pathology issues are discussed.”

IVD Australia also supports a number of initiatives that were proposed by the department as part of the Pathology Funding Review. These include the integration of pathology results within electronic health records (EHR).

“The IVD industry, through the IVD Industry Connectivity Consortium (IICC), is moving towards a standardised protocol for IVD instruments and this will ensure that results from different IVD platforms will be easily transferable to providers’ databases,” said Dr Harman.