Defining Value: The Need for a Longer, Broader View

Excerpt

With concern increasing that the prices of medications are poorly aligned with the value they generate for patients and society, several US organizations have developed value frameworks, the common goal of which is to articulate the specific ways in which medicines create value for patients and society and, in some instances, to compare these benefits against the costs of these medicines. For example, within oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering [1] and the American Society of Clinical Oncology [2] have developed guidelines for determining the value of new cancer therapies, with the former framework specifically comparing the prices of new drugs with the estimated monetary value these drugs create. In an effort to broadly capture ways in which new therapies may create value for patients, the Memorial Sloan Kettering framework also attempts to assess value based on additional metrics besides drug efficacy, including toxicity, disease burden and novelty. In addition to these organizations, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review has developed an overall approach to valuing new healthcare treatments, which relies in part on how the population cost of new therapies impacts on short-term healthcare spending. …