In a letter to Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, over 40 representatives of veterans, patients and people with disabilities expressed concern regarding the recently announced collaboration between the Institute for Clinical Economic Review (ICER) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Pharmacy Benefits Management Services office. They cautioned Secretary Shulkin about ICER's quality-adjusted-life-year (QALY) metric, citing its "potentially discriminatory" impact on people with disabilities and serious chronic conditions.
The letter stated: "We are also very concerned that ICER does not sufficiently support patient engagement. Its reports have often been criticized by patients for lacking engagement early in the scoping process, not giving patients a vote on the value of treatments under review, and failing to initiate an update of the value framework based on the availability of real-world data. In an era when policy-makers and stakeholders are trying to improve the care that our veterans receive, it has been our hope to see the VA’s health system embrace a patient-centered perspective, as opposed to becoming entrenched in a one-size-fits-all perspective of health care value. No two veterans are the same, or have the same health care needs, and each veteran deserves care from a health system that recognizes his or her unique needs and characteristics."
| va_letter_final.pdf |
