Assessment of new health technologies 2017–18

Accounting for new health technologies

While IHPA was not established to take on a major technology evaluation role, it does partially account for the adoption of new health technologies through its indexation methodology which projects the three year old data to the year of the National Efficient Price. The indexation rate reflects the average increase in cost over the previous five years.

IHPA also accounts for new health technologies when updating the Activity Based Funding (ABF) classification systems. For example, IHPA updates the Australian Refined Diagnosis Related Groups (AR-DRG) classification to ensure that it reflects current clinical practice and models of care.

IHPA seeks input from specialist health organisations such as the Health Policy Advisory Committee on Technology, Medical Services Advisory Committee and Council of Australian Therapeutic Advisory Groups.

Impact of New Health Technology Framework

IHPA has developed the Impact of New Health Technology Framework as an additional process for the review of new health technologies.

Under the Framework, IHPA through its Clinical Advisory Committee (CAC) monitors and reviews new health technologies to determine whether they are adequately accounted for in the pricing of public hospital services. Where the technology is not accounted for, IHPA may refer the technology for priority coding and classification development.

This annual process involves IHPA, the CAC and state and territory health departments reviewing reports on new health technologies provided by government advisory groups and other interested stakeholders, such as medical technology manufacturers.

A new health technology will be referred for priority classification and coding development where it can be demonstrated that:

• the technology is in use in Australian public hospitals or its future uptake is expected to be substantial enough to warrant classification or coding development
• the difference between the price weight for the most frequently mapped Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) and the technology's cost estimate is significant
• the total cost of the mapped DRGs and the number of patients is material
• the technology can be better accounted for through classification and coding development (i.e. the technology should not be a diagnostic test or pharmaceutical).

Assessment of new health technologies for 2017-18

The submission period ended on 11 September 2017. IHPA’s final assessment of the technologies to refer for classification and coding development occurred in May 2018. 

Submissions were forwarded to IHPA in a range of formats including Word, RTF, PDF and handwritten or typed hardcopy. In order to make submissions available as soon as possible, most submissions have been published in their original format. Handwritten submissions have been scanned into PDF documents. If the content has been emailed to IHPA the text of email submissions has been reproduced in Word format.

If you need help please contact IHPA by email enquiries.ihacpa@ihacpa.gov.au or by calling +61 2 8215 1100.