Principles, Methods, and Applications of Pharmacoeconomics: Positive and Normative Methodological Approach

Project leader:

Prof. Davor Mance, PhD

 

Summary

Republic of Croatia allocates more than 20 percent of the state budget, ie more than 10 percent of GDP, to health care, medical and pharmacological treatment, which is praiseworhty from the point of view of the society but problematic from the point of view of public spending, the sustainability of the insurance system, and public funds management. With the aging of the population, the needs are increasing, and the budget is at the upper limit of sustainability. Therefore, the need for pharmacoeconomics, ie the economic allocation of public and state consumption for medicines, pharmacological therapy and accompanying health services is obvious. In its positive part, the project will rely on the methods and principles of pharmacoeconomic analyses from different perspectives: society as a whole, public health management organizations (Croatian Health Insurance Fund), health care providers, pharmaceutical industry, and especially the patients. The most frequent pharmacoeconomic analyses are cost minimization, cost-benefit, cost-efficacy/effectiveness, cost-benefit, and the budget impact analysis. Budget Impact Analysis (BIA) is the basic economic criterion for inclusion on the primary and secondary CHIF lists. Measures to place drugs on the basic or supplementary list of CHIF drugs are: the importance of the drug from the point of view of public health, the therapeutic importance of the drug, the relative therapeutic value of the drug compared to other drugs on the market, relative to the market price and the overall budget limitations. The normative part relies on ethical aspects that are necessarily contextually related to efficiency, relative effectiveness, morbidity, budget constraints and other indicators, factors and determinants. The project will investigate the relationship between the aforementioned factors in the allocation of drugs and pharmacological therapies, and will specifically investigate the evaluation of risks.