Health Technology Assessment Hungary

HTA in Hungary

Health Technology Assessment is also becoming more and more important and developed in Hungary. Within the HTA Network, Hungary is represented by the Office of Health Technology Assessment (OHTA). Founded in 2004 (after the EU accession), the OHTA has the task to give an organizational framework for HTA within the country while performing assessments on drugs and medical devices. This step was important because of the EU Transparency Directive which Hungary had to adopt. By applying this Transparency Directive, “decisions on pricing and reimbursement of drugs are made in accordance with the regulations and practices of the EU” (International Society for Pharmacoeconomics, 2017). OHTA has made this Transparency Directive happen in Hungary as well.

After the OHTA has become the integrated part of the National Institute for Quality and Organisational Development in Healthcare and Medicines, it was re-named as the Technology Appraisal Head Department (TAHD) in 2012. Since then, the TAHD helps for the decision making process about medicine subsidy approvals made by the National Health Insurance Fund Administration (NHIFA).

In order to decide which technologies are able to get public funding, a guideline was issued in 2013 by the Ministry of Health. According to this, technologies can be categorized as cost-effective (2XGDP per capita/QALY) or not cost-effective (ICER > 3XGDP per capita/QALY). Pharmaceuticals, medical devices, hospital medical technologies are assessed in Hungary with the help of HTA (S.Klazinga, 2014).

Submissions for funding can reach 1.5 million HUF for pharmaceuticals. After submission, The Head of Department of Pharmaceuticals of NHIFA makes the final decision with the contribution of OHTA and TAC (Technology Appraisal Committee) (International Society for Pharmacoeconomics, 2017).

There are some cases, when not the hospitals buy the necessary technologies, devices or medications but the NHIFA does buy them and distributes them for selected patients from different hospitals. This is called itemized funding. For that reason, the so-called reimbursement priority scoring system has been developed in 2010 so as to decide which technologies to finance.