[HAS budget impact analysis guidelines: A new decision-making tool].

INTRODUCTION: Budget impact analysis (BIA) provides short and medium-term estimates on changes in budgets and resources resulting from the adoption of new health interventions.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this article is to present the main messages of the newly developed French National Authority for Health (HAS) guidelines on budget impact analysis : issues, recommendations and perspectives.

METHODS: The HAS guidelines development process was based on data derived from a literature review on BIA (search dates : January 2000 to June 2016), an HAS retrospective investigation, a public consultation, international expert advice, and approval from the HAS Board and the Economic and Public Health Evaluation Committee.

RESULTS: Based on its research findings, HAS developed its first BIA guidelines, which include recommendations on the following topics : BIA definition, perspective, populations, time horizon, compared scenarios, budget impact models, costing, discounting, choice of clinical data, reporting of results and uncertainty analysis.

CONCLUSION: The HAS BIA guidelines are expected to enhance the usefulness of BIA as an essential part of a comprehensive economic assessment of healthcare interventions, which itself includes cost-effectiveness analysis and equity of access to healthcare.