HTAs under the spotlight
July 15, 2011
A NUMBER of areas where Health
Technology Assessment authorities
can improve their practice have
been highlighted in a new report
commissioned by EFPIA, EuropaBio,
Medicines Australia and PhRMA.
The report looked at HTAs in 15
countries, including Australia’s
PBAC, and found that whilst the
processes can help payers in
making informed decisions about
allocating health system resources,
if they are poorly designed and
managed, they run the risk of
denying patients access to new
medical technologies.
Although best practice principals
vary significantly in different
countries, thus making it difficult to
formulate a single set of guidelines,
researchers said that on the whole
HTAs, including the PBAC, should
improve the amount of information
published.
To this end researchers suggested
that HTA’s should publish
performance metrics (including
time of review, decisions,
alignment of P&R with HTA).
Researchers also noted that there
were areas of discrepancy between
the intentions and actions of HTAs
which could be improved, adding
that one particular example of such
discordance is that the use of HTAs
for re-assessments appears to
happen much less often than
suggested by the HTA agency’s own
objectives.
Researchers also said that the
relationship between the
assessment and the speed of the
review, the freedom in terms of
pricing and reimbursement and
ultimately how the medicine is
used needs to be made more explicit.
The final point made by the
report revolves around the length
and cost of HTA submissions, with
researchers concluding that “there
is little or no evidence looking at
whether HTA has improved the
allocation of scarce health care
resources and whether this depends
on the different models of HTA”.
“Much more work is needed to look
at whether the benefits of HTA
exceed costs to different stakeholders,”
researchers concluded.
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