524 - Hi PAAB. Do communications sent in the context of a patient assistance program need PAAB preclearance? here is the situation. we have a patient assistance program for which we would like the vendor to use a standardized and automated system to communicate information pertinent to patient's enrollment status, notifications regarding reimbursement investigations, reminders of missing information to proceed with the service etc... The issue is that all of our Patient assistance programs are named after the therapeutic area (XYZ-Onclogy; XYZ hep C, XYZ HIV...) and within the body of the letter we have to specify the name of the product for HCP to know which product the communication is related to. These communications begin after a physician has made the decision to prescribe the product and decided to enroll his patient into the program either for reimbursement investigation or compassionate...
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continued ... drug provision. We were wondering since we want the communication to be standardized (create template with blank space to be filled with the patient's name or initial and appropriate identifiers) and send through an automated system, and since the designation of the program mentions the indication (hep C for instance) and the body of the letter has the name of the product, do we need PAAB preclearance or would these type of communication be exempt as per PAAB code. thank you.
Response: Yes, these piece fall within the scope of PAAB preclearance.
