This circular is to advice stakeholders that regrouping of Part A of the Prescribed List will not be continued as a reform measure.
The PL structure proposed by the external consultant will be used to guide reviews of specific groupings during post-listing review and assurance activities.
Background
One of the objectives of the Prescribed List reforms was to clarify the purpose, definition and scope of the PL. Regrouping of Part A was a complementary measure to the legislative work to achieve this objective. The purpose of regrouping the PL was to better align items with similar intended use.
An external consultant delivered a proposed PL grouping structure which was based on the clinical outcome of the devices and did not consider associated benefits. This resulted in some proposed groupings having a wide range of benefits – mixed benefit groups.
After considering several options for assigning a single benefit to mixed benefit groups, it was evident that implementing the proposed PL grouping structure would require re-assessing all mixed benefit groups in line with a full health technology assessment. Given this, the Government decided to cease work on the regrouping activity.