Hospital managers’ need for information in decision-making – An interview study in nine European countries

Assessments of new health technologies in Europe are often made at the hospital level. However, the guidelines for health technology assessment (HTA), e.g. the EUnetHTA Core Model, are produced by national HTA organizations and focus on decision-making at the national level. This paper describes the results of an interview study with European hospital managers about their need for information when deciding about investments in new treatments. The study is part of the AdHopHTA project. Face-to-face, structured interviews were conducted with 53 hospital managers from nine European countries. The hospital managers identified the clinical, economic, safety and organizational aspects of new treatments as being the most relevant for decision-making. With regard to economic aspects, the hospital managers typically had a narrower focus on budget impact and reimbursement. In addition to the information included in traditional HTAs, hospital managers sometimes needed information on the political and strategic aspects of new treatments, in particular the relationship between the treatment and the strategic goals of the hospital. If further studies are able to verify our results, guidelines for hospital-based HTA should be altered to reflect the information needs of hospital managers when deciding about investments in new treatments.