ARCHIVED - Common Drug Review

The Common Drug Review (CDR) is a single process for reviewing new drugs and providing listing recommendations to participating publicly-funded federal, provincial and territorial drug benefit plans in Canada. All jurisdictions are participating except Quebec. This review process will provide more consistent and rigorous reviews of new prescription drugs, so that public drug benefit coverage will be directed to the most cost-effective and therapeutically beneficial drugs. The CDR was established in September 2003, and is managed by the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH).

The CDR process has two components:

• A systematic review of the available clinical evidence and a review of the pharmacoeconomic evaluation.
• Based on the results of the review, a recommendation is made by the Canadian Expert Drug Advisory Committee (CEDAC) that the drug be listed, not listed, or listed with conditions under participating federal, provincial and territorial drug plans.

Participating drug benefit plans will continue to make individual listing and drug benefit coverage decisions based on a number of considerations, including: the CEDAC recommendation; advice and budget impact information prepared by drug plan staff; and the plan's mandate, priorities and resources. For more information on coverage provided by individual drug benefit programs, including formulary listings, please contact the appropriate drug benefit program, or click on one of the links below.

• Federal Public Drug Benefit Programs
• Provincial and Territorial Public Drug Benefit Programs