Health care value assessment frameworks are tools that can be used to measure the value of health interventions and treatments, with the potential to inform coverage and reimbursement or treatment decisions. However, “value” is not one-size-fits-all. It varies based on an individual’s personal circumstances and life stages or across diseases and conditions; can span clinical and economic to quality-of-life outcomes; and can change over time.
Recognizing that women—with diverse needs as patients, caregivers, and often as the chief health decision maker of the family—must be accounted for within health care value assessments, the Society for Women’s Health Research (SWHR) this week released updated policy principles for health care value assessment. These principles build upon SWHR’s 2019 “Policy Principles: Health Care Value Assessment,” accounting for changes in the health care value assessment landscape and identifying additional opportunities to promote patient-centered value and incorporate factors that are relevant for women in the ongoing improvement of their health and quality of life.
Among the additional opportunities identified in the 2022 Principles are:
- Ensuring value assessors consider factors, including comorbidities, age, genetics, and life stage (e.g., pregnancy), and how they can affect drug response
- Considering and accounting for what is known and unknown about populations, such as pregnant and lactating populations and persons with disabilities, and avoid taking a “one-size-fits-all” or “one-size-fits-most” approach for assessing value
- Accounting for the importance of providing patients as much choice as possible when establishing a treatment plan, particularly when there are limited options for a given disease or condition
- Capturing the lived experiences and preferences of women through patient-reported outcomes and patient preference studies
- Acknowledging and stating within value assessments where there may be a lack of data available, when perspectives are missing, and where there are limitations, and identifying and including sources to fill these real or perceived gaps
- Validating and testing value frameworks prior to and after development to guarantee the framework’s accuracy and reproducibility and to ensure it does not harm patients
SWHR supports a patient-centered approach to value assessment and is glad to see that frameworks are increasingly accounting for what matters most to patients, caregivers, and society. SWHR remains committed to ensuring that frameworks are appropriately designed and used to meet women’s needs, account for patient population diversity, and have the infrastructure and analytic capacity to evaluate data that matter to women.