Supply issue data

Thank you for your request dated 26 February 2025 under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act) for information relating to supply issues. You requested:

I'm getting in touch to request, under the Official Information Act, the total number of medicines having supply issues, by month, in the past five years - if such information exists and would be available. Please also categorise this by type of medicine, if possible.

Pharmac works closely with suppliers, wholesalers, Medsafe, the ports and regulators in other countries to ensure medicine is available across New Zealand. Supply issues can be caused by manufacturing delays due to access to active ingredients or packaging material, regulatory issues, freight and logistics issues, global increase in demand, political conflict, natural disasters, and market exits.

To support a proactive management of supply issues our contract managers record where stock falls below two months’ supply and they consider that there is a potential of a medicine going out of stock.

The information provided is broken down by Therapeutic Group 3 (TG3). Therapeutic Group 3 is a subcategory that Pharmac uses for classifying medicines by similar indication or conditions.

I have provided this information in the excel spreadsheet attached.

Note there are several caveats to this data:

• Not every incident in this dataset was necessarily an ‘out of stock’.
• As we actively manage medicine supply not every incident recorded is communicated publicly. Pharmac will communicate a supply issue when we consider there is a material risk of patient or pharmacy level impact. A large number of supply issues are resolved without any effect on patients or pharmacies.
• Data prior to 2020 was held in email form and compiled for the purposes of this response. The manual collation of this information involved an estimation of date ranges for some incidents, which could lead to inaccuracies.
• Due to the way in which this data was extracted, an incident which was ‘opened’ and ‘closed’ within the same month will not appear.
• One incident may continue across multiple months, for example if a medicine is experiencing a long-term supply issue. This may make the sum of supply issues for each TG3 appear higher than it actually was.
• Any TG3 that had no supply issues over the time period has not been included in the table.

Pharmac funds nearly 1,000 medicines in over 2,000 different presentations. At any one time, only a tiny proportion of those medicines are experiencing a supply issue. Pharmac and suppliers have a number of ways it can respond when there is a supply issue, including:

• Manually allocating stock to pharmacies,
• Air freighting extra stock,
• Sourcing a different brand of a medicine to fill the gap,
• Placing temporary limits on the amount that can be supplied at one time (for example, a medicine that is usually supplied for 3 months’ worth of doses may only be supplied for 1 months’ worth),
• Advising prescribers to use alternative medicines, if possible,
• Restricting access for new patients; and
• Listing new brands or medicines on the Pharmaceutical schedule.

There is more information on our website about how Pharmac manages medicine supply, and information about current supply issues, discontinuations, and brand changes.

Please click here to learn more about current supply issues, discontinuations, and brand changes.