Fair and Affordable Pricing

FaAP – Fair and Affordable Pricing

Scope of the Project

Visegrad Group (V4) Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary

Objective of the Project

Improving and facilitating access to effective and safe health technologies while maintaining cost-effectiveness.

Developing a system to facilitate international cooperation and enable joint price negotiations on the reimbursement of medicinal products.

Description of the Project

On 3 March 2017, during the meeting of the Ministers of Health of the V4 Group countries as well as Croatia and Lithuania, a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in the field of fair and affordable pricing of medicinal products (MoU) was signed. It is a political declaration setting out the basic framework and objectives of the FaAP project.

As specified in the document, a Coordination Committee composed of up to five experts per country was established. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia and Lithuania joined the Memorandum, followed shortly afterwards by Slovenia.

The main objective of the Memorandum is cooperation in the area of medicine pricing, which will translate into increased availability of affordable medicines. However, a particularly important aspect of the project is exchanging information and experiences concerning, i.a. good practices in the field of the pricing policy, health technology assessment, but also data from processes carried out in particular countries.

In March 2019, the Memorandum of Understanding expired, and therefore, on 15 May 2019 in Warsaw, the Ministers of Health: of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Latvia signed the second Memorandum, which is based on the first document and, taking into account the experience of the last two years of cooperation, updates the project outline and objectives.

Source: https://www.gov.pl/web/zdrowie/podpisanie-memorandum-o-wspolpracy-w-dziedzinie-uczciwych-i-przystepnych-cen-lekow (made available under the following licence: Creative Commons Uznanie Autorstwa 3.0 Polska).

As part of the FaAP, on 11-12 July 2019 the Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Tariff System, initiated the first joint workshop, during which we hosted delegations from all signatories to the Memorandum.

During the two days of the workshop, participants had the opportunity to learn about the reimbursement process practice thanks to organised and moderated workshop meetings with:

• the Praesidium of the Transparency Council;
• clinical leaders, i.e. National Consultants in haematology, neurology and clinical oncology;
• independent experts on the healthcare system;
• the Praesidium of the Economic Committee of the Ministry of Health;
• the directors of Medicine Policy and Pharmacy of the Ministry of Health.