History and structure
CVZ has a broad range of responsibilities: administration of the statutory health insurance funds, financing the health insurers, and the supervision and surveillance of the legitimacy of expenditures of the insurers. CVZ's program is approved by the Minister of Health, Welfare, and Sports.

Mission
It is the task of CVZ to supervise, coordinate, and improve the health insurance and financing system, and to guarantee accessible and appropriate health services. A natural element of this mission is to stimulate HTA of both new and established technologies.

How CVZ works
The main task of the CVZ is approval, on the basis of solid assessments, of new health technologies on behalf of the minister of health. CVZ formulates advices to the minister concerning the question which new health care technologies should be included in the package of benefits of the legal health insurance system. The CVZ advice is maximally supported by all available HTA results; CVZ makes use of existing HTA projects but also commissions new HTA projects. The phase of approval of the available evidence is executed by the staff of CVZ itself. Most experiences are in the field of Pharmacy, but the approval and advice on other areas of health care is developing rapidly.

HTA Program - Started in the year 2001 this HTA program is managed byZonMW. CVZ is involved in assessing the importance for policy of new proposals sent to ZonMW from a health-insurance perspective. The ongoing projects (started before 2001) are still managed by CVZ.

Farmacoeconomic research - To improve the quality of HTA-research and to use results when making decisions regarding the reimbursement of drugs, CVZ formulated the Dutch guidelines for farmacoeconomic research. The responsibility for carrying out financing this research into new drugs lies with the manufacturer. The guideline is published in 1999 and will be evaluated and adjusted when necessary.

Related topics - Similar efforts are going on for other topics. For the recommendations for appropriate diagnostic procedures, prescribing medical aids, drugs and other technologies and organisational questions we use the results of (HTA)-research. If there are additional policy questions there's the possibility to fund research through the different committees.

Dissemination activities
These activities include the diffusion of reports on finished projects to appropriate institutions, including medical unions, the medical profession, and health insurance companies. Dissemination also takes place via the Internet, through INAHTA, and by annually publishing collected findings from different projects.

Short summaries of reports are published in a leading Dutch medical journal, and press releases are issued, depending on the topic.

Current projects
List of ongoing projects is available in the HTA Database.

Future plans
Intensify implementation activities as part of a more general policy to enhance appropriate delivery of health services.