Dr Eleanor Perfetto on Ways to Improve Transparency, Education Around Value Assessment

Eleanor M. Perfetto, PhD, MS, senior vice president of Strategic Initiatives for the National Health Council, discusses potential strategies for increasing transparency in value assessment and where education fits into the mix.

Transcript

What are some potential strategies for increasing transparency in value assessment?

Transparency is very important in all aspects of healthcare, not just in value assessment. It’s really important that we’re seeing more and more transparency, how calculations are being conducted. Open source—some organizations are making all of their calculations in code open so anybody can take a look at it. Having that flexibility. Being able to really understand what’s being put into an assessment is really important to being able to assess the quality of it and whether or not it should be used in decision making.

How does education fit into this? How important is it to educate patients and empower them to take part in these conversations?

The education part is important on both sides. On the patient side, having them understand what goes into a health economic evaluation, a health technology assessment, or value assessment, that way they can actively participate, have that capacity to engage in the process. But it’s also important on the side of the researchers who are doing the work, for them to understand how to engage patients, how to bring them in, how to use the valuable information that patients can being into the process.