ACC, AHA Will Factor in Costs for New Treatment Guidelines

The American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association will begin to include value assessments when developing treatment guidelines and performance measures, in recognition of accelerating healthcare costs and the need for care to be of value to patients.


The American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association will begin to include value assessments when developing treatment guidelines and performance measures, in recognition of accelerating healthcare costs and the need for care to be of value to patients.

The ACC/AHA Statement on Cost/Value Methodology in Guidelines and Performance Measures states a key goal of achieving the best possible health outcomes with finite health care resources. Historically, value consideration and resource utilization were explicitly excluded from practice guidelines and performance measures formulations, though they were often implicitly considered.

"There is growing recognition that a more explicit, transparent, and consistent evaluation of healthcare value is needed," stated Paul Heidenreich, M.D., co-chair of the statement's writing committee. "These value assessments will provide a more complete examination of cardiovascular care, helping to generate the best possible outcomes within the context of finite resources."

The ACC and AHA will determine whether the value or the cost-effectiveness of a given treatment or diagnostic strategy has been adequately evaluated on the basis of published studies. Initially, it is expected that relatively few treatments or diagnostic strategies will have had their value adequately evaluated through studies.

In time, however, the number of evaluated treatments and strategies will increase as more studies are published. The ACC and AHA note that momentum is increasing in the area of healthcare cost-effectiveness and that incorporating value assessments in clinical guidance documents may further incentivize researchers, medical schools and other stakeholders to invest in the country's move toward greater care value.

Those treatments or diagnostic strategies that have been adequately evaluated will be given a rating. The proposed level of value categories are high value (H), intermediate value (I), low value (L) – possibly augmented where appropriate with uncertain value (U) – and value not assessed (NA). The proposed threshold for L and H are those recommended by the World Health Organization, which labels a care strategy as "poor value" if the cost per life year gained is greater than three times the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, and a "good value" if the cost per life year gained is less than one time the GDP per capita. In the U.S., treatments that have a cost-effectiveness ratio of $150,000/QALY or more would be considered low value. The value category (i.e., H, I, L, U) would be augmented by a level of evidence, paralleling those for scientific LOE (i.e., A, B, C) and would be based on the robustness of the database supporting the value category.

The societies will not yet "be prescriptive" in how to best use the new value assessments, and that the new value category is to appear alongside the traditional effectiveness ratings, which remain unchanged. The committee stressed that the new value category is to be only one of several factors considered in resource allocation decisions.

More for you

Loading data for hdm_tax_topic #better-outcomes...