Health committee  No. The CDR is a recommendation, and we take the advice of the CDR fully. We see across the country much greater consistency in the drugs that are listed, but we do see that some plans have a unique clientele, and in those cases, there may be a reason.

Health committee  Yes, we would like to see wait times go down, and we are working to see that they are going down. You must remember that the common drug review is only dealing with new chemical entities—

Health committee  —and my understanding is that they've looked at around 68 since their inception. And that's against a backdrop of, as I said, a formulary of about 6,000 different drugs that are listed. So in terms of the access to drugs, we feel our formulary does cover quite broadly the drugs that are available in the different therapeutic classes necessary for first nations and Inuit.

Health committee  We reimburse them for all the drugs that have been approved by the common drug review.

Health committee  We have two drugs that had a negative recommendation. On both of them, as I said, our decision to fund was based on the unique needs of our clientele, which is sometimes different from that of the general public.

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members. Thank you on behalf of Health Canada for the opportunity to speak to the committee on the topic of the Common Drug Review. I'm joined by my colleagues Abby Hoffman, the executive coordinator of pharmaceutical management strategies for Health Canada; and Scott Doidge, the manager of pharmacy for the non-insured health benefits program.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Mr. Chairman, I'm pleased to be here today before this committee to discuss Health Canada's role with respect to housing on-reserve and the actions we've taken subsequent to the Auditor General's report. The first nations and Inuit health branch is responsible for a number of health services for first nations and Inuit.

Health committee  No, I said there were 15 million billings processed in a year.

Health committee  Yes. Yes, I do. Perhaps I could just clarify so we get the proportions, Madam Chairman. There's a difference between the number of service providers and the number of claims they submit. I'm told that there are around 8,000 pharmacies that bill us on a regular basis and approximately 15,000 dentists.

Health committee  I think there are a variety of different scales by which we get into audits. These are actual visits to the suppliers' premises.

Health committee  I can provide the committee with some of the detailed parameters. In some ways we try not to be too precise in exactly what we do, because it's a way of enforcing the regime and we don't want to give an advantage to those people who want to try to avoid the departmental audit.

Health committee  I can assure the committee that our process for audit and verification meets and exceeds industry standards.

Health committee  From 1999 to March 31, 2006, based on 905 audits of pharmacies and dental and medical suppliers, we identified and recovered $4.4 million, which was repaid to the consolidated revenue fund.

Health committee  It was a question of whether or not there was a valid bill. For example, we expected to see a claim to First Canadian Health, which was paying on our behalf, for a prescription. When we visited the pharmacy, we expected that they could show us that a prescription of client X was on their books and from their own records that the pharmaceutical product they dispensed was actually dispensed.

Health committee  We do find a certain number of cases. Sometimes they're mistakes. Perhaps sometimes they are what we believe to be volition, in terms of intended misrepresentation. Where we think it's misrepresentation, we refer the cases to the RCMP. Often, though, we first follow through a process where we identify it with the provider and say, on the basis of this audit, we find that a certain amount of the billings you have sent us are unjustified, and we ask for a refund.