OBJECTIVES:

To determine the degree of influence of factors on decision-making process in the healthcare sector, an econometric model was built. Decision of 102 proposals for inclusion in the Essential Drugs List (EDL) from 2019 to 2022 were analyzed. As a result, it was determined that 18 factors that formally should be assessed under consideration do not affect the decision of the commission.

Since transparency and objectification of the process in decision-making in the field of healthcare is becoming increasingly important, it is advisable to further improve the decision-making process on the inclusion of healthcare technologies in the EDL.

METHODS:

An expert survey was conducted to determine the factors and their weights that should be considered while decision making on the governmental level. An invitation for the survey to establish rating for proposed factors was sent to 160 experts. 54 experts provided their answers of whom 14 did not complete the survey, so their results were not taken into further calculations.

To reduce the number of evaluated factors, those with share of less than 2.25% (fourth quartile) as the least significant, according to experts, were excluded from further analysis.

RESULTS:

According to the analyzes clinical effectiveness is the most important criteria with 8.5%weight. Drug safety, quality of clinical study, added quality of life, cost-effectiveness and added life expectancy of patients have almost equal weights: from 7.6% to 7.9%, their ranking positions are the second to the sixth.

Current obligatory factors for EDL decision-making process that now have threshold scores I, don’t reach leading position in the expert survey and some of them weren’t included in the final list of factors.

CONCLUSIONS:

Thus, a new system of factors and their weights is proposed, which will increase the objectivity of the decision-making process in the health technology assessment.