Frameworks for Hospital-Based Health Technology Assessment to Resolve Financial Issues in South Korea

One of the main purposes of conducting a health technology assessment (HTA) is to provide decision makers, patients, related researchers (e.g., in the areas of health policy, HTA, or health technology development), and reimbursement payers with information about the economic, organizational, social, and ethical impacts of specific health technologies, as well as obtaining clinical evidence and economic analysis [1]. For these reasons, many countries have established independently operated agencies to produce scientific evidence regarding health care policies and to provide solutions for general healthcare services at a national level [2]. Although HTA has been developed to meet governmental needs, advancements in healthcare systems have raised worldwide the necessity of progressive decentralization because the results of HTA conducted by central agencies are frequently irrelevant to hospital issues, and sometimes inappropriate for local-level decision making. Furthermore, it has been found that the produced policy recommendations rarely reflect local priorities and local values [3].