Time from approval to reimbursement recommendations in healthcare systems with centralized HTA processes. Focus on the Polish HTA agency.

Background: To analyze the time from drug registration to reimbursement recommendations, we examined medicinal products, including new clinical indications, registered by the EMA between 2014 and 2019 across various therapeutic areas.

Materials and methods: The Polish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Tariffication (AOTMiT) was compared with 11 agencies in England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Norway, France, Germany, New Zealand, Canada, Australia. A total of 1,942 recommendations published by 12 HTA agencies were analyzed.

Results: The time from registration to recommendation in Poland was statistically significantly longer than for the other countries. The analysis revealed noticeable differences in the time it takes from drug registration to recommendation across the countries included in this analysis. Analyzing trends from 2014 to 2019 across individual countries, there appears to be a slight tendency toward a decrease in the median time from registration to recommendation in many agencies.

Conclusions: This may suggest improvements in the processes of the recommending authorities and the companies responsible for providing data for assessment. Despite Poland having one of the longest times from registration to recommendation among the countries analyzed, there has been a clear year-over-year decrease in the time to publication of reimbursement recommendations.