In Italy, the National Health System (NHS) costs are
controlled by the regional governments (which are
financially accountable for health care expenditure, including
hospital drug budgets), but agreements regarding price and
discounts are decided in AIFA (Italian Medicine Agency).
For this reason, some regional governments ask the
pharmaceutical companies to produce a "Health Technology
Assessment" before deciding to introduce a drug in the
regional hospital list of accepted drugs. Thus, in terms of
public policy maker and its decision process, the choice of
well-specified points of view is an essential ingredient in the
critical assessment of economic evaluation, which becomes
more effective when information is presented in the general
terms of a cost of illness analysis (COI), or, in a
disaggregated way by means of a list of the costs and the outcomes or consequences of the intervention, namely as a
cost consequence analysis (CCA).
Furthermore, while it has been observed that economic
evaluations are usually performed in different countries at
national level, in local health care decision making there is
lack of health economic data and evaluations, disconnecting
economic evaluations from the types of decision that local
institutions must normally face.
The University of Padova financed a composite and
interdisciplinary group of researchers to develop a proof-of-concept like program aimed at serving the Veneto region as a
template for the evaluation of the impact of (high-cost)
drugs. The program, financed as “Progetti di Ateneo” 2009,
(Code CPDA093183/09, "Modello per la valutazione
dell'impatto economico, sociale e di salute derivante
dall'utilizzo dei nuovi farmaci oncologici nella regione
Veneto") has come now to its end and this report represents
the outcome of a two-year intense research work.
Gratefully, the leading investigators acknowledge the
contribution of the entire EIHCD-VeRo Research Project
Agreement for their help and cooperation at the various
stages of the project development.