Event Highlights

With support from a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute® (PCORI) Eugene Washington Engagement Award, on February 27, 2020 IVI hosted a first-of-its-kind multi-stakeholder summit to examine current gaps and emerging approaches in value assessment.

IVI’s Methods Summit, entitled Defining Needs and Progress Toward Improving Methods in Value Assessment, brought together more than 45 thought leaders representing patient organizations, health systems, health plans, clinicians, employer purchasers, and research and methods experts.

The group shared perspectives and priorities for improving methods of value assessment and considered the opportunities to address current gaps. Participants identified top priorities for improvement in methods and considered immediate and longer term factors that can lead to change, including:

Participants universally acknowledged a lack of credible and widely accessible data inputs to answer important questions related to the value of treatment interventions. Improving methods to define patient factors and inputs and better connect patient-reported outcomes and real-world data sources represents an important and shared priority.

Methods for consistent patient engagement throughout the lifecycle of value assessment – from evidence generation to comparative clinical and cost-effectiveness assessment – are being refined in real time by patient organizations, researchers, and health systems. Greater effort to disseminate shared learning and to define best practices will improve both the inputs and the factors used to answer the question “value for whom?”

Value assessment has potential impact beyond considerations of price, including potential insights for value-based insurance design, as well as clinical pathway development and dissemination. Efforts to create a learning system regarding application to decision-making could improve engagement across stakeholder sectors and improve the consistency and relevance of such approaches.

Methods that help all stakeholders consider factors like comparative value across treatments (drug and non-drug), the cost and impact of an intervention on caregivers, the cost and impact on workplace productivity, and emerging concepts like social determinants of health were identified as important to ensure the relevance of value assessment, particularly to employer-purchasers and health systems.

Building on ISPOR Task Force 2018 recommendations, greater investment and collaborative research is needed to evaluate methodological approaches that improve the relevance of metrics. More emphasis on shared learning in methods will aid in validation and application into value assessment processes.

IVI’s Methods Summit serves as a call to action for both the health economics community and decision stakeholders to acknowledge the current gaps in value assessment and identify scientifically valid, emerging avenues to measure value. To ensure a patient-centered and value-focused system – from research to bedside – all stakeholders in the value conversation must define a prioritized research agenda. IVI plans to build on the success of this year’s summit and track progress by convening annual progress meetings.

For details, read the complete Methods Summit Report.

For more information and to get involved, please contact us info@thevalueinitiative.org.

Words from Our Thought Leaders and Experts

Jennifer Bright, MPA
Jennifer Bright, MPAExecutive Director, Innovation and Value Initiative
“It was gratifying to bring together such a committed cross-section of health care leaders to really dive into a complex discussion of how to improve the methods we’re using to measure and compare value of health interventions. There is strong agreement that we need to collectively invest in improving the data inputs – particularly representing patient preferences and outcomes – and work to define how novel methods and value assessment tools can offer insights in context to unique decision makers. “
Lou Garrison, PhD
Lou Garrison, PhDProfessor Emeritus, University of Washington
“IVI’s ability to bring this diverse group together is key, and it is never easy…It was a pleasure and an honor to participate in this lively and important discussion with implications for where we researchers need to focus our efforts in the months and years to come to meaningfully improve value assessment. No doubt, these participants and many others will want to carry forward this work.”