Lived experience of affordability as a barrier to prescription medicines: A longitudinal qualitative study

Background: Lack of affordability is a major barrier to medicines access in many countries. It can result in ethnic and other inequities in medicines use and these have been documented in New Zealand. We aimed to understand the lived experience of barriers to accessing medicines faced by groups that are likely to encounter them, and to explore how they played out over time. This paper presents results related to affordability. Methods: We carried out a longitudinal qualitative study, repeatedly interviewing 21 households about their lives and access to medicines, over a year. Participants were Ma<overline>ori, Pacific, former refugee, or Pa<overline>keha<overline> (New Zealand Europeans) with limited incomes. Results: Many participants faced social disadvantage and many had physical and mental health problems. Often, they had busy and stressful lives, and this formed the backdrop to issues with medicines. Charges for GPs and medicines could directly prevent access, but also eroded relationships with healthcare providers, reducing acceptability of services. There could be confusion about charges, and when they were perceived as unreasonable participants felt aggrieved. At the time of the study, most (but not all) pharmacies had prescription charges, and limited financial resources drove some participants' choice of pharmacy. Some felt forced to choose between cost and physical accessibility or quality of care. Lack of affordability also interacted with other barriers to access, such as lack of transport, to prevent access to needed medications. Lack of affordability also made participants more vulnerable to the impact of small mistakes in prescribing and dispensing. Discussion: Exploring lived experience provides insights into the multiple ways that lack of affordability prevents access to medicines: directly, through interaction with other barriers to access including transport, by damaging trust and reducing acceptability of services, and by making participants less able to deal with mistakes made by health professionals.