Access to new drugs for dialysis patients: challenges for indigenous and non-indigenous populations

Most dialysis patients are on 5 - 10 medications. The costs of these medications vary widely, ranging from pennies per day for water soluble multivitamins, to several thousand dollars per year for erythropoietin-stimulating agents. In Canada, public funding for drug therapies is undertaken by each province, with wide variability in coverage and on restriction criteria for expensive new drugs. For native Canadians and Inuit, access to drugs is superior to that of other Canadians through a federal program. The Canadian system for drug evaluation, where strict evidence-based medicine (EBM) and comparative effectiveness research (CER) is applied, is instructive and may provide clues to the future from an international perspective. Given the unique challenges in nephrology, it is predicted that access to new drugs and other therapies will be restricted by these evaluation methods. Indeed, it seems desirable for nephrology organizations to respond to this new threat in a pragmatic and balanced way. Part of that response might be a call for exceptional status for dialysis, with adjusted criteria of EBM and CER that would be more suitable, and stimulate innovation and research in nephrology.