Healthcare Value Assessments – Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER)
Value-based assessments are moving into healthcare and may become the newest, potentially greatest barrier to care for vulnerable populations. What’s critical is understanding what the assessor considers to be of “value”.
Value assessment advises health insurers, and the government on whether health treatment should be used, for whom, and under what circumstances. Most assessments look at the costs, health benefits, and risks of the treatment or technology in question. This sounds like a sensible thing to do but is ineffective at best without the patient and patient experience added into the equation.
Without thinking about the people involved, and the patient’s experience, a cure that treats a small segment of the population may not be considered to have value and remain unavailable to the population it cures. A surgery that marginally improves a condition may not be considered to have value in strict cost analysis, but the improvement to the patient may be lifechanging. Perhaps patients over a certain age don’t respond consistently to medication. Does anyone over that age get access to the medication though some of them respond well?
Until these factors, the benefits to the patient, are added into the equation, value assessments are barriers to potentially lifesaving and life-changing treatments, and likely injurious to the patient.