Australian medicine subsidy tracker

Which medicines Australia funds — and which it doesn't

script.report tracks every decision the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) makes about adding a medicine to the PBS, and the government spend that follows. Outcomes, evidence, ICERs, and prescriptions — all drawn from pbs.gov.au.

PSDs indexed year coverage last refresh Freeopen source
Try: pembrolizumab adalimumab semaglutide venetoclax oncology rare disease
PBAC decisions
unique drugs assessed
Recommended
of all PBAC outcomes
Avg. submissions to listing
across recommended drugs
PBS benefit (latest year)
government outlay, AUD
Scripts dispensed
prescriptions filled
PBS government benefit

PBS spending — three decades of growth

Government benefit paid to dispensing pharmacies. Source: pbs.gov.au statistics.
Run python build_site_data.py to load PBS data
PBAC outcomes
Recommendation breakdown
All extracted PSDs, by latest decision per drug
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Source: extracted PBAC PSDs. Latest decision per drug; resubmissions counted within the drug record.
Activity
PSDs published per year
Loads with PSD data
Counts only public summary documents indexed in this database. Each PSD = one PBAC consideration.
Government benefit by drug

Where the PBS dollars go

Top medicines by government benefit · click any drug to view its PBAC profile
Top 10 by spend
Highest government benefit
Loads with PBS drug-spend data
Government benefit (AUD) paid to dispensers in the latest reporting year.
Top 10 cost-per-script
Most expensive per dispensing
Minimum 50 scripts to filter low-volume noise
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Source: PBS drug-level statistics, latest financial year.
Therapeutic class

Where the spend concentrates

Top ATC drug classes by 2024 PBS government benefit
ATC level 2
Top 10 classes by spend
  1. Run build_site_data.py to load ATC data
Government benefit (AUD) by Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical class.
PBAC pipeline
PSDs by therapy area
Volume of decisions assessed, latest decision per drug
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Therapy areas extracted from PSD body text. Multi-area drugs counted once.
Cost effectiveness

ICERs and the path to listing

Incremental cost-effectiveness ratios extracted from PSD economic evaluations
ICER distribution
The $75k ceiling, in practice
Base-case ICERs across recommended drugs (AUD per QALY)
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Lybrand & Wonder (2020) found PBAC has historically not recommended drugs above ~$75,000 AUD/QALY at base case.
Persistence
Submissions to listing
How many PBAC attempts before a drug is recommended
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Counted from extracted PSD history. Lybrand & Wonder (2020) reported a mean of 1.70 submissions per recommended drug.
Therapy-area outcomes

Recommendation rate by therapy area

% of unique drugs recommended at the latest PBAC decision
Recommended share
% recommended, by therapy area
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Includes "Recommended" and "Recommended with restriction" outcomes.
Resubmission rate
% needing more than one attempt
Of recommended drugs, how often the first submission wasn't enough
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Among recommended drugs only. Therapy areas with <5 recommended drugs are excluded.
All decisions

Browse the full database

Click any row for the full PBAC profile · click column headers to sort
Outcome Therapy area
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Showing latest decision per drug
Drug Therapy area Indication PBAC outcome Year Submissions ICER (AUD/QALY)
Run build_site_data.py to populate the decisions table