Thresholds can be useful to focus the conversation around the value of treatments in healthcare even if stakeholders have different views on what thresholds should be, explained Steve Pearson, MD, MSc, president of the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review.
Thresholds can be useful to focus the conversation around the value of treatments in healthcare even if stakeholders have different views on what thresholds should be, explained Steve Pearson, MD, MSc, president of the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review.
Transcript
What is the importance of utilizing thresholds to judge affordability and value?
Thresholds mean different things to different people. I think the value of a threshold in itself is that it helps focus the conversation. And it does help to, in a sense, put a stake in the sand, to say, 'This is one way of thinking about how much more we should be willing to pay for an added clinical benefit to patients.' You can always let decision makers judge that or themselves.
And in a very pluralistic health system like the US, you might assume that some payers or some health systems, even some consumers or patients, have different thresholds for what they are willing to pay or how they would like to allocate their resources. But having one theshold, in a sense, helps treat, different conditions fairly or similarly across those different conditions. Because intuitively, there's no reason why we should automatically assumed we should pay more for a patient in heart disease than a patient with a neurologic disorder, or vice versa.
So thresholds kind of throw that conversation fairly across all treatment areas. And also if you're looking at drugs or devices or different kinds of changes to the healthcare system, it puts those on the same playing field, as well. So it's not by itself a definitive answer that you just kind of write down and people walk away. But it's a way to stimulate and focus the kinds of conversation about value that we want to have with all stakeholders at the table.
Key Indicators of Myasthenia Gravis Disease Progression Reduced With Efgartigimod
April 18th 2025Research presented at the recent annual meeting of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy highlights outcomes among patients who have anti-acetylcholine receptor antibody-positive myasthenia gravis that include reduced exacerbations and need for immunoglobulin.
Read More
Examining Low-Value Cancer Care Trends Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
April 25th 2024On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we're talking with the authors of a study published in the April 2024 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care® about their findings on the rates of low-value cancer care services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Listen
Bias Reduction, Better Access Key to COVID-19 Equity Gains
April 14th 2025Interventions that target enhancing health care equity among communities disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic can be improved by including comprehensive needs assessments at the patient, provider, and health system levels.
Read More
Orca-T showed lower rates of graft-vs-host disease or infection compared with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) or acute leukemias in the Precision-T trial, Caspian Oliai, MD, MS, UCLA Bone Marrow Transplantation Stem Cell Processing Center, said.
Read More