AHRQ's free research can help plans anticipate coverage issues.

Ever been surprised by an authorization request for a new procedure or technology you’d never heard of? Like cardiac stents to treat multiple sclerosis? Or autologous mesenchymal stem cells for yet another orthopedic indication? Or fecal transplantation for Crohn’s disease? Ever been surprised by a request for a costly new targeted drug that got FDA approval months sooner than indicated in the formal PDUFA schedule for FDA decisions? No doubt, you would like to minimize surprises like these. Yet how can your organization keep up with developments of hundreds of new and emerging drugs, devices, and procedures? Doing so requires expansive resources and a large team working daily to pore over hundreds of information feeds — trade journals, clinical literature, proprietary databases, company SEC filings, medical conference abstracts and posters, and other resources — resources that most managed care medical policy and authorization teams don’t have. Read on to learn about free new publicly available resources that can help your organization keep up. Enter health care horizon scanning. Knowing what’s coming down the pike this year or next is critical for planning. Health care horizon scanning, an early warning system, is intended to do just that. Horizon scanning is a process to identify and track emerging health care technologies and services in clinical stages of research and development or very early adoption. Its purpose is to identify, filter, and prioritize new and emerging health technologies and services for myriad decision makers. Health plans, health systems, and health policymakers can use the information outputs from horizon scanning to understand possible impacts of new technologies and services on health outcomes, the health care system, care delivery, utilization, and costs. The information is key for strategic planning. The strategic planning may pertain to any of the following: