ICER and Other Stakeholders address High Cost of Rare Disease Therapy

November 23, 2020

At the AMCP Nexus 2020 Virtual meeting, two major themes emerged from the specialty pharmacy practice sessions: new methods for assessing the efficacy and value of high-cost medications and how best to prepare for a packed rare disease drug pipeline.

Sometimes referred to as single or short-term therapies (ssTs), some of these treatments can cost six figures, with just a few affected patients taking a huge bite out of a provider and/or payor’s bottom line. It’s therefore not surprising that the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) is developing modifications to its existing analytical approaches to evaluating the value of a new drug or therapy. “These ssTs challenge us to think about how we assess them, price them, pay for them and make them available,” said ICER Founder and President Steven D. Pearson, MD, MSc. Read more here.