ICER to Re-Evaluate How to Assess Value and Comparative Clinical Effectiveness

The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), an independent nonprofit research institute, on Thursday opened a national call for suggestions on how to improve its value assessment framework, which assesses the comparative clinical effectiveness and value of health care tests, treatments and delivery systems.

The call for comments, which are expected to come before 12 September, will help inform ICER’s 2017 update to the methods that underpin its evidence reports on new drugs and other health care interventions.

Most recently, ICER announced a review of treatments for rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis. ICER said its highest priority areas for the potential revision are on:

• “Methods to integrate patient and clinician perspectives on the value of interventions that might not be adequately reflected in the scientific literature, elements of value intended to fall in the current value framework within ‘additional benefits or disadvantages’ and ‘contextual considerations’
• Incremental cost-effectiveness ratios: appropriate thresholds, best practice in capturing health outcomes through the [quality-adjusted life year] or other measures
• Methods to estimate the market uptake and ‘potential’ short-term budget impact of new interventions as part of judging whether the introduction of a new intervention may raise affordability concerns without heightened medical management, lower prices, or other measures
• Methods to set a threshold for potential short-term budget impact that can serve as a useful ‘alarm bell’ for policymakers to signal consideration of whether affordability may need to be addressed through various measures in order to improve the impact of new interventions on overall health system value.”

“The ultimate goal of the value framework is to support this public dialogue — among life science companies, insurers, patient groups, and others — on how best to use evidence as the cornerstone of improvements in clinical practice, coverage policies, and pricing,” the institute said.

The latest iteration of this ICER framework has been in use for over a year and has evolved to include a section examining potential “additional benefits or disadvantages” to guide consideration by the independent panels that debate ICER reports at public hearings.

ICER Opens National Call for Proposed Improvements to its Value Assessment Framework