How does the operation of PHARMAC's 'Community Exceptional ...

Limitations to the Research
The iterative public policy research approach taken here has drawn on data from
PHARMAC, the arms of government and parliament, the literature on the subject,
the media reports and key informants. When I set out to gather the policy data, I
intended to interview patients who had been affected by PHARMAC’s
Community Exceptional Circumstances policy. However, after informally meeting
some patients who might have been interview subjects, I discovered that their
level of knowledge of the Community Exceptional Circumstances policy and their
understanding the reasons behind decisions was very low. This was particularly
the case for patients who had, for one reason or another, been denied access to
medicines under PHARMAC’s policy. The patients’ doctors primarily made the
decision to claim, and it was the patients’ doctors who were required by
PHARMAC to manage the claims for them. Consequently, I interviewed the
patients’ representatives and professional advocates who were familiar with the
operation of the PHARMAC’s policy. The lack of a case study research
methodology of patients was an unavoidable limitation to my research.
The thematic analysis was greatly assisted by NVivo 8 computer software
programme. After collecting and organising all the data and completing the
search functions for interrogated the data, I used NVivo 8 to extract the most
commonly used words and sets of words. This was an important step in
identifying the building blocks of the emergent themes. However, NVivo 8 was
unable to decipher the magnitude or importance of participant contributions from
both the media stories and some key informant interviews. Several complaints
about PHARMAC were made in exaggerated terms and conversely, some
interviewees made insightful comments using reserved and quiet language.
Future users of NVivo 8 would be assisted by being aware that the programme
has this limitation.
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