Hospital-based HTA: quale valore per la valutazione delle tecnologie nelle Aziende Sanitarie italiane?

The early development of Italian Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is largely based on experimental approaches to the hospital-based technology assessment, which are argued to be the most important peculiarity of the country and still the real driver of the HTA movement. HTA in hospitals can serve as a tool for aiding administrative procedures or increasing dialogue and transparency as well as supporting the bottom-up awareness generation around HTA principles. The objectives of this study are to present the results of a survey of HTA activities at the hospital level in Italy and to assess the relationship between the implementation of HTA principles and variables, namely consumption and expenditure for orthopaedic prostheses, which have managerial implications for healthcare providers. Our results are based on 38 hospitals located in 13 Italian Regions of which 53% have a commission working on MDs assessment. Nineteen hospitals declare a link exists between procurement and HTA activities. Our findings suggest that HTA could potentially impact on health technologies’ uptake and expenditure when realized in coordination with other hospital units, thus becoming a useful tool for budget control and planning to local healthcare managers.