The Northern Region Clinical Practice Committee (NRCPC) conducts hospital-based health technology assessments (HTA) to provide advice to hospital managers regarding both the implementation of new technologies and the configuration of existing services. To assist in the comparison of dissimilar health technologies applied across different disciplines and different hospitals, the NRCPC developed a prioritization tool. This abstract reports the use of the tool over the 17-year period that the committee has been in operation.

The score given to each HTA depends on cost-utility, predicted health improvements and the quality of evidence. In addition to the scoring tool, editorial notes are provided to contextualize the agreed score and to explain the NRCPCs interpretation of the evidence.

Most of the time hospital managers have made decisions concordant with the recommendations of the NRCPC; submissions are recommended to be implemented, declined, or receive interim approval with data collection. The latter often occurs when there are uncertainties about efficacy, but no (or very few) safety concerns, or where there are uncertainties about whether the proposed costs are reproducible in the hospital setting. In these cases, management responses often require submitters to undertake a limited number of cases and collect data for audit over a one-to two-year period. Low-scoring submissions are often declined, whereas high-scoring submissions have not been declined to date. The interim approval (with data collection) strategy has had variable outcomes based on the willingness of the implementing clinicians to collect accurate data about both costs and outcomes. From 2005 to 2022, the NRCPC received 146 submissions. This poster reports graphical representations of the decisions made over the NRCPCs period of operation.

The NRCPC scoring tool has been successful to date in providing a framework for decision makers to allow consistent, unbiased and objective assessments of dissimilar technologies. Prioritization tools in hospital-based HTA are beneficial to decision makers in hospital settings.