We wish to acknowledge the recent Letter to the Editor in Value in Health from the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics (NCPE) in response to our recent publication.1 We acknowledge that rapid review (RR) is an important step in the reimbursement process in Ireland and are grateful for the additional insight provided by the NCPE. We address the issues the NCPE raises in turn below.
In relation to the different types of RR recommendations, our analysis did not explicitly model the intermediary RR outcome of “HTA [health technology assessment] at submitted price” because the research question was what determines the requirement for an HTA—the final outcome of the RR process. The final outcome was of interest because, generally, the most straightforward path to reimbursement is when an HTA is not recommended.