Patient and public involvement in health technology decision-making processes in Brazil

The study aims to characterize and discuss the processes of patient and public involvement (PPI) in the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa), the National Committee for Health Technology Incorporation (Conitec), and the National Agency for Supplementary Health (ANS) in Brazil.

This is an exploratory, descriptive, and comparative study, conducted by analyzing the public documents and regulation of the three institutions.

The mechanisms for PPI included public consultations, public hearings, participation in advisory committees, and health technology evaluation requests. Anvisa conducted 187 public consultations between 1999 and 2018, gathering 10,699 contributions. In total, 76 (41%) public consultations did not present information about the contributions received. Conitec carried out 234 public consultations and received 53,174 contributions between 2011 and 2018. It was identified that 70 (23%) recommendations from Conitec did not go through public consultation, and 26 (8%) recommendations changed after public consultation. Recommendation changes seemed to have occurred especially in cases with a greater number of contributions in the public consultation process. ANS conducted eight public consultations regarding the list of health procedures and events covered by health insurances between 2000 and 2018, and it received 31,498 contributions. For three public consultations, there was no information about the number of contributions received.

There are regulatory advances and institutional activity supporting PPI in highly technical decision-making processes in Brazil, although heterogeneously among the analyzed institutions. The power of PPI to influence health technology deliberative processes still requires in-depth studies, including the characterization of stakeholders and the legitimacy of decisions.