On Friday, Oct. 18, the Partnership to Improve Patient Care joined over 50 leading patient advocacy groups in submitting a joint comment letter to the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) on its draft 2020 Value Assessment Framework. The letter criticized ICER for defending its use of the QALY, saying that ICER’s framework ignores ethical principles that enjoy broad support among the general public. Instead of relying on metrics that treat patients as averages, the letter encouraged ICER to abandon it’s use of discriminatory value metrics and develop mechanisms that incorporate robust patient and clinician feedback. “Above all, we urge ICER to put patients and people with disabilities at the center of all of your assessments,” the letter states. “ICER’s value assessments do not promote affordability for patients, but instead give payers justification to create barriers to treatment coverage that benefit their own bottom line.”
The letter in its entirety can be read here.
| 2020_voh_framework_comments_.pdf |