News

Is Rate Of Return Pricing A Useful Approach When Value-Based Pricing Is Not Appropriate?

Friday, 22 March 2019

Value-based pricing (VBP) is an efficient method for pricing new drugs. Rate of return pricing could, however, be useful in two cases: treatments for ultra-rare diseases, and ‘cures’ for conditions currently being treated at great expense. Rate of return pricing gives rise to challenges. Two are (i) finding proxy estimates of development costs including failures, and (ii) driving future research towards discovering high-value treatments.

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Exploring Variations in the Opportunity Cost Cost-effectiveness Threshold by Clinical Area: Results from a Feasibility Study in England

Wednesday, 20 March 2019

Estimating a cost-effectiveness threshold reflecting the opportunity cost of adopting a new technology in a health system is not easy. A new OHE report provides empirical evidence on the relationship between health outcomes and health expenditures in England. Results suggest that setting a cost-effectiveness criterion for NICE may not be capable of being synthesised using scientific methods alone, but involve political judgements.

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Abolishing Pharmaceutical Rebates in the US? Looking at the Trade-Offs

Tuesday, 12 March 2019

The combination of rising drug costs in the US and increasing financial stress for individual patients has triggered intense national concern. One target has come under particular scrutiny: rebates. A new report published by ICER and the OHE describes how alternatives to the current rebate system offer potential disadvantages as well as potential benefits. It outlines evidence presented to date and key questions that still need to be answered.

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Cheap and Dirty: The Effect of Contracting Out Cleaning on Efficiency and Effectiveness

Wednesday, 6 March 2019

Research just published in Public Administration Review, co-authored by OHE’s Professor Graham Cookson, demonstrates that contracting out auxiliary public services may lower the quality of the core service as well as the auxiliary service. Studying NHS cleaning services, the research shows that contracted out cleaning is cheaper but lower quality and leads to worse health outcomes including higher rates of hospital-acquired infections.

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