SWHR’s 2022 Health Care Value Assessment Principles

In 2019, SWHR conceived a set of principles to help ensure value frameworks and assessments reflected factors relevant to women in the ongoing improvement of their health. This year, SWHR has revisited and updated this framework to reflect the ongoing shift in how the U.S. health care system delivers and pays for care.

By revisiting the 2019 Principles, SWHR had the opportunity to reflect on the current health care value assessment landscape, identify additional opportunities to promote patient-centered value, and incorporate factors that are relevant for women, who have diverse needs as patients, caregivers, and often as chief health decision makers of the family.

In 2019, SWHR conceived a set of principles to help ensure value frameworks and assessments reflected factors relevant to women in the ongoing improvement of their health. This year, SWHR has revisited and updated this framework to reflect the ongoing shift in how the U.S. health care system delivers and pays for care.

By revisiting the 2019 Principles, SWHR had the opportunity to reflect on the current health care value assessment landscape, identify additional opportunities to promote patient-centered value, and incorporate factors that are relevant for women, who have diverse needs as patients, caregivers, and often as chief health decision makers of the family.

SWHR’s updated Value Assessment Principles include:

 

  1. Value assessments should consider and account for differences among patient populations and subgroups.
  2. Value assessments should acknowledge the full spectrum of treatment options for a given medical condition.
  3. Value assessment frameworks, in addition to measuring clinical outcomes, should account for what matters most to patients, caregivers, and society.
  4. Value assessments should take both the short- and long-term costs and benefits of a given therapy into consideration.
  5. Value assessments should contain a range of high-quality and patient-centered sources of evidence.
  6. Value assessments should account for relevant data that could help assess health and economic outcomes.
  7. Value assessment organizations should provide ample opportunities for stakeholder engagement to ensure their input is both acknowledged and meaningfully incorporated into assessments.
  8. Value assessment processes, methodologies, and results should be transparent to all stakeholders.
  9. The intended use of value assessment frameworks—and by whom they are intended to be used—should be clearly articulated.
  10. Value assessment frameworks should be living documents that reflect a system of continuous learning.