Original Title: Informe sobre la elaboración de la Guía GuNFT «Guía para la no financiación de tecnologías sanitarias ya existentes en los sistemas sanitarios»

Authors' objectives: The aim of this guideline is to facilitate the establishment of such a process, in other words a transparent, systematic and explicit process to assess the potential for disinvestment in certain health technologies or in some of their indications which, for whatever reason, fail to achieve the objective(s) for which they were originally financed.

Authors' results and conclusions: Thirty five of the 139 ideas proposed by the nominal group were finally selected. Basically, a technology should not be funded if there is evidence of an overall deterioration in the health of the patient to whom it is applied, if the potential risk of that technology is not acceptable or if it produces a high degree of discomfort or has a negative impact on the patient´s health. To facilitate the acceptance of disinvestment, detailed information regarding the reason for taking the decision should be made available to both the patient and the health professionals using the technology, and the latter should participate in the proccess. The guideline, presented in Annex II of this report, was divided into different sections: a) General preliminary recommendations, b) Completing the application, c) Checking and prioritising applications, d) Assessing applications, e) Taking the final decision and f) Action plan.

Authors' recommendations: This is the first guideline that has been elaborated to design a scenario to disinvest in established health technologies. Nevertheless, this is only the first version and it should therefore be tested and refined if/when necessary.

Authors' methods: The «Nominal Group» technique was used to determine the most relevant aspects to be taken into consideration regarding disinvestment decision making. For this purpose, 10 prominent experts working in different areas related to health care delivery, administration and technology assessment were selected. Eight questions related to technological disinvestment were presented to the group, and proposed ideas were discussed by teleconference. For each question, each member selected a maximum of 10 ideas that he or she considered to be the most important, ranking these on a escale of 1 (less important) to 10 (most important). The ideas with the highest consensus were those receiving at least five votes with six or more points. The structure and domains of the «Guideline for the Acquisition of New health Technologies» (GANT) and the «Guideline for decision making on the introduction of new genetic tests» (GEN), published by the Health Technologies Assessment Agency of Andalusia (AETSA) were, together with the results obtained from the nominal group, taken into account in order to draft the new guideline. This draft was reviewed by two external experts in the area of health technology assessment in hospitals, then translated into English and reviewed once again by two English-native international experts in the area of disinvestment processes in health technologies.

Project Status: Completed

Year Published: 2010

URL for published report: https://www.euskadi.eus/contenidos/informacion/2010_osteba_publicacion/es_def/adjuntos/e_10_11_report_GuNFT.pdf

URL for additional information: https://www.euskadi.eus/contenidos/informacion/2010_osteba_publicacion/es_def/adjuntos/e_10_12_infor_GuNFT.pdf

English language abstract: An English language summary is available

Publication Type: Not Assigned

Country: Spain

Organisation Name: Basque Office for Health Technology Assessment

Contact Address: C/ Donostia – San Sebastián, 1 (Edificio Lakua II, 4ª planta) 01010 Vitoria - Gasteiz

Contact Name: Lorea Galnares-Cordero

Contact Email: lgalnares@bioef.eus

Copyright: Basque Office for Health Technology Assessment (OSTEBA)