The combination of rising health care costs, efforts to achieve universal or near-universal coverage globally, and growing drive for better outcomes brings an urgent demand to spend health care funds efficiently and in accordance with each country’s priorities. A response to such demand requires, first, an understanding of what technologies and interventions (drugs, devices, procedures, diagnostics, and health care services) increase the quality and value of health care and, second, knowledge of the policy levers that encourage health care systems to adopt appropriate technologies. Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) and Health Technology Assessment (HTA) are important tools used in different ways by countries to achieve these goals.
A new analysis--led by AcademyHealth Senior Scholars Gerry Fairbrother, PhD and Ellen O’Brien, PhD, with Rosina Pradhananga, MPH and Kalipso Chalkidou, MD, PhD, a collaborator from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the United Kingdom—explores these issues and describes ways in which the United States and other high-income countries assess effectiveness of new drugs, devices, procedures, diagnostics, and health care services and make coverage decisions based on these assessments. The report, which was supported by the Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy and the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, also provides an overview of HTA activities in Europe, Canada, and Australia and examines the new public investments in CER in the United States.
Read the full report, Improving Quality and Efficiency in Health Care through Comparative Effectiveness Analyses: An International Perspective.