All’s Quiet on the Value Front?

It’s the time of year when the value assessment landscape settles into a rare period of calm, so I’ll highlight a few “value adjacent” items this week.

On Monday, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) published its latest Unsupported Price Increase (UPI) report. Although ICER is known for conducting value assessments, Even ICER acknowledges that the UPI is not a value assessment. National Pharmaceutical Council continues to have significant concerns about these reports, summarized in my quote from Ed Silverman’s story on the topic:

We believe that bad evidence leads to bad policy, and after reviewing this year’s report, we continue to be concerned that ICER’s UPI Report lacks balance and uses flawed methods. Relying on these reports could lead to ill-advised policies and inappropriately limit patient access to needed treatments

This is a particular concern in an environment where ICER actively markets the UPI report to states with?Prescription Drug Affordability Boards?when the data used is old with methodological shortcomings that also fail to account for medical inflation. We continue to call for the discontinuation of this report.?

On Wednesday, the PhRMA Foundation announced three award-winning papers exploring challenges in Medicare Drug Price Negotiation. The Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy (JMCP) will publish the papers in a special issue on Inflation Reduction Act implementation challenges (all are available online ahead of print):

• Medicare Drug Price Negotiation: The Complexities of Selecting Therapeutic Alternatives for Estimating Comparative Effectiveness, Inmaculada Hernandez, PharmD, PhD; Emma Cousin, Pharm; Olivier J. Wouters, PhD; Nico Gabriel, MA; Teresa Cameron, MS; Sean D. Sullivan, BScPharm, PhD
• Identifying Therapeutic Alternatives in CMS Drug Negotiation: The Case of Etanercept, Helen Mooney, MPH; Matthew Martin, MA; Liam Bendicksen, BA; Aaron S. Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH; Benjamin N. Rome, MD, MPH; Hussain S. Lalani, MD, MPH, MSc
• Evidence Inventory: A Patient-Centered Methodological Framework for CMS to Assess the Clinical Benefit of Drugs to Inform Maximum Fair Price Negotiation, Nabin Poudel, PhD; Salome Ricci, PharmD, MS; Julia F. Slejko, PhD

If you missed Center for Innovation & Value Research and EveryLife Foundation for Rare Diseases ' webinar, “Real Experience, Real Impact: Valuing Rare Disease Treatments in Healthcare,” you can catch the replay here.