OBJECTIVES: Therapeutic Positioning Reports (TPRs) were introduced in 2013 to assist pricing and reimbursement (P&R) decisions in Spain. Our objective was to describe the main characteristics and the time elapsed from the initiation of Spanish TPRs to their dispatch to the General Direction of the Basic Portfolio of Services of the National Health System (NHS) and Pharmacy (DGCSF) and their publication on the Spanish Agency for Medications and Healthcare Products (AEMPS) website.

METHODS: The information evaluated was obtained from the Oblikue TPR database containing information on: TPR start date, date of dispatch to the DGCSF, date of publication on the AEMPS website, disease, indication and type of drug (adult/paediatric, orphan/non-orphan, oncological/non-oncological, etc.), conclusions and final considerations of the TPR, reimbursement status and autonomous community participating in drawing it up. Only TPR published until December 2017 with information available on the beginning of their preparation, their sending to the DGCSF, their commercialization and their publication on the AEMPS website were included in this analysis.

RESULTS: Until December 2017 146 TPRs for drugs were issued for 63 different pathologies. Diabetes mellitus (6.8%, n=10) and lung cancer (5.5%, n=8) were the pathologies with the highest number of published TPRs. In 11% (n=16) of the published TPRs the drug evaluated was not reimbursed by the Spanish NHS, of which 10 were orphan drugs. For TPRs with the required information available (n=90), the median (IQR) time from the start of the TPR procedure was 7.1 months (6.0 to 8.9) for their sending to the DGCSF and 14.5 months (11.1 to 21.1) to their publication on the AEMPS website

CONCLUSIONS: TPRs are an instrument to homogenize the presentation of available evidence synthetically and to provide national therapeutic positioning. TPRs provide relevant information related to the drug context in Spain.