You may have seen the notice from Pharmac allowing new special authority applications for liraglutide (Victoza) from 1 March 2025.
The special authority criteria will be the same as when special authorities were suspended in May 2024. This will again allow prescribing according to national guidelines and best practice. We all know how beneficial this will be for people living with diabetes.
Pharmac has assured the intention is for no further suspensions of special authority criteria for GLP-1 agonists to allow ongoing access for those who meet criteria. To ensure availability, it continues to be important these medications are only prescribed for people with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).
Empagliflozin can now be prescribed under special authority for people with chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), those patients with T2DM who meet the HFrEF criteria can also be prescribed Liraglutide if they meet the special authority criteria for T2DM.
Please contact the Pinnacle diabetes lead in your area if you have any questions regarding this.
Comment from Dr Jo Scott-Jones, clinical director
You can use your diabetes clinical dashboard to quickly identify the people who are eligible for GLRP1 but who have never been prescribed a GLRP1A.
To do this, go to the the patient report and choose the filter "eligible for GLRP1A" > click "yes" > find the filter "prescribed GLRP1A" > click "no" - hey presto, you will have your list of NHIs to review.
If you have too many patients identified by this (there are 5,189 eligible but not prescribed aged over 25 across the whole network so this might be a lot) - you could use the other filters to look at your Māori population first.
The dashboards are not perfect of course, so think about it when you have someone in front of you, but as a next iteration in your Quality Improvement Plan PDSA cycle, this might be a really good exercise.
Kathy joined Pinnacle earlier this month as clinical diabetes specialist for Waikato, replacing the role previously held by Anne Waterman.
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