Engaging Stakeholders Throughout the Value Assessment Process

Last week, the National Pharmaceutical Council unveiled “Guiding Practices for Patient-Centered Value Assessment,” which offer comprehensive considerations for the development and application of frameworks for assessing the value of health care. Value assessments are an evolving area, yet growing in use as health care stakeholders look for ways to evaluate the value of care that is being provided to patients.

NPC’s guiding practices include 28 specific elements, which are broken out into six key aspects of value assessments: the assessment process, methodology, benefits, costs, evidence, and dissemination and utilization. 

During the next few days, we’ll take a closer look at each of these six main areas, along with our thoughts on budget impact analyses. Today, we kick off the series with our post on the assessment process.

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Assessing “value” in health care is much like the Indian story about blind men who touch an elephant and explain what they experience. By touching different parts of the elephant—like its ears, tail, hide or tusk—they are only able to “see” one key component of the animal and miss the bigger picture. Similarly, by not including a wide range of stakeholders in our value assessment processes, we could miss the bigger picture about what aspects of a treatment are most important to consider.

Involving stakeholders from the very start—and throughout—is incredibly vital to the assessment process. This includes basic steps such as announcing the topic, process and timelines in advance to allow stakeholders sufficient time and ample opportunity to participate and provide feedback. It also includes asking for input on draft key questions and scope prior to beginning an assessment, as well as engaging stakeholders during the entire process through public comments and review of the materials. Doing so ensures all perspectives are considered and allows for refinement of the assessment along the way, if it’s needed.

Over time, we learn more about how existing treatments work in the real world and new treatments are discovered. For those reasons, assessments should be reviewed on a regular basis to keep pace with ongoing medical innovation. Otherwise, an assessment could become outdated and adversely impact health care decision-making.

It also takes time, staff and resources to conduct these assessments thoroughly and accurately. That’s why it’s essential for organizations interested in conducting comprehensive reviews to ensure that they have the necessary resources in place to do meaningful, quality work.

Importantly, these steps help to ensure that future value assessments account for all stakeholder perspectives—leading to the development of high-quality, meaningful tools that help patients, doctors and payers make informed decisions in the years ahead.