PNS36 VALUE Based Procurement: A Tool to Make Better Purchasing Decisions after COVID-19

The G20 proclaimed that Value-Based Healthcare (VBHC) offers the best approach to sustain and improve healthcare services after the pandemic. Value-Based Procurement (VBP) enables the implementation of VBHC by considering total cost of care and health outcomes to support better purchasing decisions. This poster advocates for a broader adoption of VBP in Latin America (LA). We conducted semi-structured interviews with six experts from academia, government, industry and multilateral organizations. A standardized questionnaire was used to identify case studies, key success factors and hurdles for implementation of VBP in LA. Experts provided supporting literature that was further expanded using the snowball technique. We identified three examples: (1) Integrated Renal Care Services (Colombia), where the High Cost Account defines and record clinical outcomes financially rewarding those outperformers; (2) Vaccines value-based recommendation (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia), where a National Vaccine Advisory Committee selects the vaccine to be procured informed by a cost-effectiveness analysis; and (3) Diabetes Type 1 care model (Brazil), in a public-private collaboration defines and gather outcomes to support a value-based tender for 2022. Common key success factors include multi-stakeholder alignment on value attributes; monitoring and reporting performance indicators and the training of stakeholders. Hurdles identified included lack of IT infrastructure, price-based procurement mandates and institutional misalignment (finance, procurement, health agencies). Traditional procurement approaches undermine value realization from healthcare investments. Although we focused in 3 cases involving public funding, there are more examples in the private sector which demonstrate the feasibility and sustainability of a VBP approach. Education and mentoring to develop local expertise are key to strengthen decision makers’ confidence in advancing VBP, while multilateral organizations could play a role in capacity building and institutional alignment. With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of better purchasing decisions is clearer than ever.