The Ministry of Health in Uruguay has a health technology assessment division that provides decision makers with evidence-based information on the efficacy, safety, and costs of health technologies to be included in the Comprehensive Plan of Health Care. Since 2010, patients have begun to demand access to unfunded, high-cost technologies through writs of protection. Judicialization of the right to health increased rapidly from 2010 to 2014. In this context, a Technical Advisory Commission was created in 2015 to assess patient requests on a case-by-case basis. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the results obtained with a new strategy developed to face the judicialization of access to high-cost technologies.

The methodology used to evaluate the implementation of the strategy consisted of reviewing a database of access requests from October 2016 to October 2017. The demographic characteristics, technologies requested, prescriptions, and results of the process were analyzed.

In the study period 654 technologies were requested for funding through the process. The included population had a mean age of 60 years; sixty-two percent were men. Of the technologies requested, eighty-five percent were drugs and fifteen percent were devices. The requested technologies included cancer treatments (thirty-five percent) or drugs and devices for the treatment of rheumatologic, ophthalmologic, infectious, neurologic, and cardiovascular conditions. The six most requested technologies (forty-five percent of all requests) were: abiraterone for prostate cancer; aortic endoprosthesis for vascular aneurysm; lenalidomide, rituximab, and azacitidine for oncohematologic diseases; and cetuximab for colorectal cancer. The Ministry of Health funded thirty-six percent of the requests.

The new strategy was successful in reducing the judicialization of access to unfunded, high-cost technologies in Uruguay, and it helped to prioritize the inclusion of new drugs in the national formulary.