Canada: New Amendments To PMPRB Pricing Regulations Push Back Deadlines By Six Months

Update: See December 30, 2020 and January 26, 2021 articles discussing the further amendments which defer the coming into force date of the Amended Regulations until July 1, 2021. 

Further to our June 1, 2020 update, regulations amending the coming into force date of the Regulations Amending the Patented Medicines Regulations (Additional Factors and Information Reporting Requirements) (the "Amended Regulations") were published this morning in Part II of the Canada Gazette.

These new regulations-officially titled Regulations Amending the Regulations Amending the Patented Medicines Regulations (Additional Factors and Information Reporting Requirements)-were registered on June 1, 2020 and came into force on that date.

The newly registered regulations generally push back the timelines in the Amended Regulations by six months. As previously announced, the coming into force date of the Amended Regulations has been moved from July 1, 2020, to January 1, 2021. Similarly, section 4.4 of the Amended Regulations previously required the Board to consider excessive pricing based on the three new pharmacoeconomic factors for sales in Canada after June 30, 2020. Under the new amendments, the PMPRB will conduct that assessment for sales after December 31, 2020. Analogous revisions were made to subsection 4.2(4), which sets deadlines for providing the estimated maximum use of a medicine, and subsection 4.1(4), which governs the provision of cost-utility analyses.