AAKP Flash Survey - Beyond the QALY: Putting Patients at the Center of Value and Access

Policy think tanks, healthcare organizations, and the insurance industry use different methods to evaluate the value of new medical treatments, including their perceived effectiveness, care benefits, and costs. These assessments play a key role in decisions about your insurance coverage and your access to new innovations in cardio, kidney, and metabolic therapies that determine your health, capacity to keep working, and even transplant readiness.

One approach, called Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs), is used by non-medical and medical experts, some policy professionals, and health economists to measure the impact of new medical innovations and treatments within the context of your potential length and “quality” of your life.

However, serious questions have been raised about whether these methods adequately reflect individual patient experiences and insights, the insights of kidney experts, patient treatment preferences, and how patients themselves actually define “quality of life.”

AAKP invites patients, care partners, and healthcare professionals to share their knowledge, experiences, and perspectives on these issues. Your responses will help inform an upcoming HealthLine webinar discussion about treatment value, medical innovation, and patient access – as well as also shape public comments AAKP will be making throughout the remainder of 2026 through 2027 in the use of economic analysis alone when determining patient access to new innovations in cardio, kidney, and metabolic drugs and diagnostics.

You will also have the opportunity to share your contact information at the end of the survey if you are interested in participating in future research opportunities surrounding this issue.