A health economics organization called the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review is publishing a migraine report that soon could influence whether your patients can access the medicine you prescribe. Your input is vital.
What is ICER?
ICER, or the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, is a non-governmental health economics organization that analyzes drugs’ prices and effectiveness. Though ICER lacks any formal authority, insurance companies often look to ICER reports to inform coverage policies. If ICER determines that a medication is not cost effective by their calculations, your patients could be denied access to the medications you prescribe.
The methods ICER employs in their cost-effectiveness analyses have been widely criticized for producing biased and inaccurate results. For example, ICER may consider the number of headache-free days a drug provides, but it does not account for reduced symptom severity, decreased symptom duration, or how impactful a few headache-free days may be to someone in chronic pain.
What Can I Do?
Submitting comments to ICER now can help ensure fewer coverage issues for your patients later. From November 7 through December 6, you can advocate on behalf of your patients by following the instructions attached to submit comments to ICER.
How Do I Submit a Letter?
ICER requires:
- Word document – no PDFs
- 12-point Times New Roman Font
- 5 page maximum (not including references)
Attach your Word document to an email addressed to [email protected] with the subject line “Provider Comment on Draft Scoping Document for Treatments for Acute Migraine” and a short introduction.
Please note that all letters submitted as a public comment will be posted publicly to the ICER website and will be shared with members of the voting panel, so only share information you are comfortable being posted online.
We encourage you to construct your letter in a format you are comfortable with. Click Here for a link to a a document outline to assist you as you construct your letter.
For examples of letters previously submitted, please go HERE.
