The Health Technology Assessment Unit (TAU) of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) (Canada)

Abstract

In jurisdictions that are endowed with a centralised, authoritarian health services structure, such as the United Kingdom, the development of hospital-based HTA will probably be of little interest. However, in jurisdictions like Canada in which hospitals, limited only by their budgets, largely determine for themselves what services they will provide, much health-care policy is created at the hospital level. In Canada, where curative health services are a provincial responsibility, decisions on the acquisition of technologies of high unit cost such as MRI are made by provincial governments. However, the acquisition of technologies of lesser unit cost is mostly decided at the hospital level. Since hospital budgets account for more than one third of all health-care spending, it is essential that hospitals base their decisions on unbiased, accurate information. However, until 2001 no hospitals had any structured permanent method for acquiring such information.