Integrating Financial Risk Protection Into Economic Evaluation and Policy Decision Making: What, Why, and How?

PURPOSE: Policymakers aim to achieve health system objectives that not only improve health outcomes but also protect individuals and families from financial risks associated with illness, including out-of-pocket health costs and non-health-related expenses. There is growing recognition of the importance of incorporating financial risk outcomes into economic evaluations, making them a critical criterion for selecting priority interventions and informing insurance coverage decisions. This workshop will explore two key questions: What are appropriate measures of financial risk? And how can financial risk protection (FRP) be integrated into economic evaluation frameworks to guide coverage decisions? DESCRIPTION: Verguet will open the workshop with an overview of the importance of FRP in priority setting, current methods for measuring FRP, and key questions for advancing research (12 minutes). Khor will present on the financial toxicity of therapeutic innovations in oncology (12 minutes). By linking cancer registry data with financial credit records, she will explore whether rapid introduction of new treatments exacerbated trade-offs between survival and financial burden. Lavelle will focus on the financial burdens associated with productivity losses experienced by patients and caregivers (12 minutes). She will discuss methods for capturing these burdens in economic evaluations and examine the broader implications for families and society. Jiao will introduce a framework for integrating the value of health insurance in mitigating financial risks into cost-effectiveness analysis (12 minutes). The session will include interactive real-time polling, where participants will respond to questions based on specific case studies that illustrate approaches to incorporating financial risks and their implications. The polling results will guide an interactive discussion on the role of financial risks in economic evaluations and their impact on coverage policy decisions (12 minutes).