This perspective was first shared in our Weekly View e-newsletter, which summarizes the week’s most significant drug pricing news. To subscribe, click here. 

ICER takes an iterative approach to our assessments, engaging with patients and the broader public throughout our entire eight-month review. This public and transparent process, along with our eagerness to incorporate constructive feedback along the way, improves the science behind our work. And just as importantly, it ensures we never lose sight of the patients who rely on the US health system to deliver both access and affordability to the treatments that can improve their lives.

Let’s take a deeper dive into the ICER report process:

  • Through the first half of our assessments, we speak with individual patients and patient advocacy organizations working in that disease area to better understand the full impact the disease has on patients and caregivers alike, what outcomes matter most to patients, and the broader contextual considerations that make that condition unique.
  • About midway through each ICER assessment, we publish a Draft Evidence Report. This preliminary draft marks the midpoint of ICER’s eight-month process of assessing these treatments, and the findings within this document should not be interpreted to be ICER’s final conclusions.We accept public comments on this report for approximately one month.
  •  Incorporating public feedback on last week’s preliminary public draft, we then publish our revised Evidence Report. This report serves as the basis of a public meeting, where patients will have the opportunity to speak directly to the manufacturers and insurers making consequential decisions around pricing and access to medicines that treat their condition.
  • A few weeks after the public meeting, we publish the Final Evidence Report, which summarizes the independent appraisal committee’s deliberations over the clinical evidence and patient testimony at the public meeting and includes a set of policy recommendations generated by experts spanning all key stakeholder groups.