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Why the Patient Perspective Matters: Researchers, Value Assessors, and Patient Advocates Discuss the Next Generation of Value Assessment

November 22, 2019

Read this summary of the PhRMA Foundation’s inaugural value assessment conference.

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And that’s a wrap!

The PhRMA Foundation’s inaugural value assessment conference has come and gone. Hosted in partnership with the National Health Council, last week’s conference brought together leading health economics researchers, patient advocates, and other key stakeholders to discuss how best to connect the latest value assessment research with practical applications for health care decision making.

If you weren’t able to join us last week, you can view the conference slide deck and agenda of the day’s speakers and panel discussions.

The day began with remarks from Foundation President Eileen Cannon followed by Jaime Sanders of the Migraine Patient Advocacy Center, who discussed why value assessment is so important from a patient’s perspective.

A series of panel discussions moderated by Dr. Sachin Kamal-Bahl of COVIA Health Solutions followed. The first, featuring representatives from the Foundation’s four Centers of Excellence, provided panelists with an opportunity to highlight some of the latest approaches to value assessment research and how these new models are working to embrace the patient perspective, be useful to decision makers, and appropriately capture the value of innovation.

The Foundation was pleased to welcome Dr. Susan dosReis, Director of the Patient-Driven Values in Healthcare Evaluation (PAVE) Center at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy; Dr. George Miller, Co-Director of the Research Consortium for Healthcare Value Assessment; Dr. Jon Campbell, Director of the Center on Pharmaceutical Value (pValue) at the University of Colorado; and Dr. Peter Neumann, Principal Investigator of the Center for Enhanced Value Assessment (CEVA) at Tufts Medical Center to discuss their current research and forthcoming projects.

These discussions were followed by two reaction panels, where stakeholders from the value assessment and patient communities had the opportunity to discuss why these models are important and how they can be translated into practical applications for the health care system.

Featured guests included: Dr. Steve Pearson of the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), Dr. Nicole Mittman of the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies (CADTH) and Jennifer Bright of the Innovation and Value Initiative (IVI) as well as Karl Cooper of the American Association on Health and Disability, Leah Howard of the National Psoriasis Foundation, Dr. Tom Parry of the Integrated Benefits Institute, and Dr. Richard Willke of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR).

In addition to several rounds of lively and stimulating discussion, attendees were also treated to a keynote lunch with Dr. Josephine Briggs, Interim Executive Director of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), and heard from Dr. Eleanor Perfetto, Executive Vice President of the National Health Council, about evolving methods for including the patient voice into value assessments.

The day concluded with an awards ceremony and presentation of the Foundation’s 2019 Challenge Awards. Dr. Bryan Luce, Chairman of the Foundation’s Value Assessment Committee, introduced the first, second, and third place winners, whose work focused on novel proposals to improve value assessment methods that move beyond using the quality-adjusted life year (QALY) to evaluate health care treatments.

Dr. Lori Frank and Dr. Thomas Concannon of the RAND Corporation took first prize for their proposal to incorporate patient preferences into value assessment by employing multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods using patient-informed criteria derived through Goal Attainment Scaling. Second place went to Dr. Charles E. Phelps of the University of Rochester. Dr. Phelps’ paper discusses the advantages of using MCDA in the evaluation of healthcare technologies, barriers to expanded use, and the specific steps needed to increase ease of use.

The award for third place was tied between a proposal by Dr. Phelps and Dr. Darius N. Lakdawalla of the University of Southern California to use a novel method of incorporating risk and uncertainty into assessments of healthcare technologies and a paper by Dr. Surachat Ngorsuraches of Auburn University that outlines a Patient Experience Value Method that facilitates the incorporation of patient-derived attributes of value based on FDA protocol and discrete choice experiments.

The winning papers will be published in a series of special features in the American Journal of Managed Care, the first of which can be viewed HERE.

The Foundation would like to give a tremendous “thank you” to those who made this event a success.