Rita Faria’s journal round-up for 18th June 2018

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Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot. If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch.

Objectives, budgets, thresholds, and opportunity costs—a health economics approach: an ISPOR Special Task Force report. Value in Health [PubMed] Published 21st February 2018

The economic evaluation world has been discussing cost-effectiveness thresholds for a while. This paper has been out for a few months, but it slipped under my radar. It explains the relationship between the cost-effectiveness threshold, the budget, opportunity costs and willingness to pay for health. My take-home messages are that we should use cost-effectiveness analysis to inform decisions both for publicly funded and privately funded health care systems. Each system has a budget and a way of raising funds for that budget. The cost-effectiveness threshold should be specific for each health care system, in order to reflect its specific opportunity cost. The budget can change for many reasons. The cost-effectiveness threshold should be adjusted to reflect these changes and hence reflect the opportunity cost. For example, taxpayers can increase their willingness to pay for health through increased taxes for the health care system. We are starting to see this in the UK with the calls to raise taxes to increase the NHS budget. It is worth noting that the NICE threshold may not warrant adjustment upwards since research suggests that it does not reflect the opportunity cost. This is a welcome paper on the topic and a must read, particularly if you’re arguing for the use of cost-effectiveness analysis in settings that traditionally were reluctant to embrace it, such as the US.

Basic versus supplementary health insurance: access to care and the role of cost effectiveness. Journal of Health Economics [RePEc] Published 31st May 2018

Using cost-effectiveness analysis to inform coverage decisions not only for the public but also for the privately funded health care is also a feature of this study by Jan Boone. I’ll admit that the equations are well beyond my level of microeconomics, but the text is good at explaining the insights and the intuition. Boone grapples with the question about how the public and private health care systems should choose which technologies to cover. Boone concludes that, when choosing which technologies to cover, the most cost-effective technologies should be prioritised for funding. That the theory matches the practice is reassuring to an economic evaluator like myself! One of the findings is that cost-effective technologies which are very cheap should not be covered. The rationale being that everyone can afford them. The issue for me is that people may decide not to purchase a highly cost-effective technology which is very cheap. As we know from behaviour economics, people are not rational all the time! Boone also concludes that the inclusion of technologies in the universal basic package should consider the prevalence of the conditions in those people at high risk and with low income. The way that I interpreted this is that it is more cost-effective to include technologies for high-risk low-income people in the universal basic package who would not be able to afford these technologies otherwise, than technologies for high-income people who can afford supplementary insurance. I can’t cover here all the findings and the nuances of the theoretical model. Suffice to say that it is an interesting read, even if you avoid the equations like myself.

Surveying the cost effectiveness of the 20 procedures with the largest public health services waiting lists in Ireland: implications for Ireland’s cost-effectiveness threshold. Value in Health Published 11th June 2018

As we are on the topic of cost-effectiveness thresholds, this is a study on the threshold in Ireland. This study sets out to find out if the current cost-effectiveness threshold is too high given the ICERs of the 20 procedures with the largest waiting lists. The idea is that, if the current cost-effectiveness threshold is correct, the procedures with large and long waiting lists would have an ICER of above the cost-effectiveness threshold. If the procedures have a low ICER, the cost-effectiveness threshold may be set too high. I thought that Figure 1 is excellent in conveying the discordance between ICERs and waiting lists. For example, the ICER for extracapsular extraction of crystalline lens is €10,139/QALY and the waiting list has 10,056 people; the ICER for surgical tooth removal is €195,155/QALY and the waiting list is smaller at 833. This study suggests that, similar to many other countries, there are inefficiencies in the way that the Irish health care system prioritises technologies for funding. The limitation of the study is in the ICERs. Ideally, the relevant ICER compares the procedure with the standard care in Ireland whilst on the waiting list (“no procedure” option). But it is nigh impossible to find ICERs that meet this condition for all procedures. The alternative is to assume that the difference in costs and QALYs is generalisable from the source study to Ireland. It was great to see another study on empirical cost-effectiveness thresholds. Looking forward to knowing what the cost-effectiveness threshold should be to accurately reflect opportunity costs.

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Chris Sampson’s journal round-up for 11th June 2018

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Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot. If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch.

End-of-life healthcare expenditure: testing economic explanations using a discrete choice experiment. Journal of Health Economics Published 7th June 2018

People incur a lot of health care costs at the end of life, despite the fact that – by definition – they aren’t going to get much value from it (so long as we’re using QALYs, anyway). In a 2007 paper, Gary Becker and colleagues put forward a theory for the high value of life and high expenditure on health care at the end of life. This article sets out to test a set of hypotheses derived from this theory, namely: i) higher willingness-to-pay (WTP) for health care with proximity to death, ii) higher WTP with greater chance of survival, iii) societal WTP exceeds individual WTP due to altruism, and iv) societal WTP may exceed individual WTP due to an aversion to restricting access to new end-of-life care. A further set of hypotheses relating to the ‘pain of risk-bearing’ is also tested. The authors conducted an online discrete choice experiment (DCE) with 1,529 Swiss residents, which asked respondents to suppose that they had terminal cancer and was designed to elicit WTP for a life-prolonging novel cancer drug. Attributes in the DCE included survival, quality of life, and ‘hope’ (chance of being cured). Individual WTP – using out-of-pocket costs – and societal WTP – based on social health insurance – were both estimated. The overall finding is that the hypotheses are on the whole true, at least in part. But the fact is that different people have different preferences – the authors note that “preferences with regard to end-of-life treatment are very heterogeneous”. The findings provide evidence to explain the prevailing high level of expenditure in end of life (cancer) care. But the questions remain of what we can or should do about it, if anything.

Valuation of preference-based measures: can existing preference data be used to generate better estimates? Health and Quality of Life Outcomes [PubMed] Published 5th June 2018

The EuroQol website lists EQ-5D-3L valuation studies for 27 countries. As the EQ-5D-5L comes into use, we’re going to see a lot of new valuation studies in the pipeline. But what if we could use data from one country’s valuation to inform another’s? The idea is that a valuation study in one country may be able to ‘borrow strength’ from another country’s valuation data. The author of this article has developed a Bayesian non-parametric model to achieve this and has previously applied it to UK and US EQ-5D valuations. But what about situations in which few data are available in the country of interest, and where the country’s cultural characteristics are substantially different. This study reports on an analysis to generate an SF-6D value set for Hong Kong, firstly using the Hong Kong values only, and secondly using the UK value set as a prior. As expected, the model which uses the UK data provided better predictions. And some of the differences in the valuation of health states are quite substantial (i.e. more than 0.1). Clearly, this could be a useful methodology, especially for small countries. But more research is needed into the implications of adopting the approach more widely.

Can a smoking ban save your heart? Health Economics [PubMed] Published 4th June 2018

Here we have another Swiss study, relating to the country’s public-place smoking bans. Exposure to tobacco smoke can have an acute and rapid impact on health to the extent that we would expect an immediate reduction in the risk of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) if a smoking ban reduces the number of people exposed. Studies have already looked at this effect, and found it to be large, but mostly with simple pre-/post- designs that don’t consider important confounding factors or prevailing trends. This study tests the hypothesis in a quasi-experimental setting, taking advantage of the fact that the 26 Swiss cantons implemented smoking bans at different times between 2007 and 2010. The authors analyse individual-level data from Swiss hospitals, estimating the impact of the smoking ban on AMI incidence, with area and time fixed effects, area-specific time trends, and unemployment. The findings show a large and robust effect of the smoking ban(s) for men, with a reduction in AMI incidence of about 11%. For women, the effect is weaker, with an average reduction of around 2%. The evidence also shows that men in low-education regions experienced the greatest benefit. What makes this an especially nice paper is that the authors bring in other data sources to help explain their findings. Panel survey data are used to demonstrate that non-smokers are likely to be the group benefitting most from smoking bans and that people working in public places and people with less education are most exposed to environmental tobacco smoke. These findings might not be generalisable to other settings. Other countries implemented more gradual policy changes and Switzerland had a particularly high baseline smoking rate. But the findings suggest that smoking bans are associated with population health benefits (and the associated cost savings) and could also help tackle health inequalities.

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Chris Sampson’s journal round-up for 4th June 2018

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Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot. If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch.

A qualitative investigation of the health economic impacts of bariatric surgery for obesity and implications for improved practice in health economics. Health Economics [PubMed] Published 1st June 2018

Few would question the ‘economic’ nature of the challenge of obesity. Bariatric surgery is widely recommended for severe cases but, in many countries, the supply is not sufficient to satisfy the demand. In this context, this study explores the value of qualitative research in informing economic evaluation. The authors assert that previous economic evaluations have adopted a relatively narrow focus and thus might underestimate the expected value of bariatric surgery. But rather than going and finding data on what they think might be additional dimensions of value, the authors ask patients. Emotional capital, ‘societal’ (i.e. non-health) impacts, and externalities are identified as theories for the types of value that might be derived from bariatric surgery. These theories were used to guide the development of questions and prompts that were used in a series of 10 semi-structured focus groups. Thematic analysis identified the importance of emotional costs and benefits as part of the ‘socioemotional personal journey’ associated with bariatric surgery. Out-of-pocket costs were also identified as being important, with self-funding being a challenge for some respondents. The information seems useful in a variety of ways. It helps us understand the value of bariatric surgery and how individuals make decisions in this context. This information could be used to determine the structure of economic evaluations or the data that are collected and used. The authors suggest that an EQ-5D bolt-on should be developed for ’emotional capital’ but, given that this ‘theory’ was predefined by the authors and does not arise from the qualitative research as being an important dimension of value alongside the existing EQ-5D dimensions, that’s a stretch.

Developing accessible, pictorial versions of health-related quality-of-life instruments suitable for economic evaluation: a report of preliminary studies conducted in Canada and the United Kingdom. PharmacoEconomics – Open [PubMed] Published 25th May 2018

I’ve been telling people about this study for ages (apologies, authors, if that isn’t something you wanted to read!). In my experience, the need for more (cognitively / communicatively) accessible outcome measures is widely recognised by health researchers working in contexts where this is relevant, such as stroke. If people can’t read or understand the text-based descriptors that make up (for example) the EQ-5D, then we need some alternative format. You could develop an entirely new measure. Or, as the work described in this paper set out to do, you could modify existing measures. There are three descriptive systems described in this study: i) a pictorial EQ-5D-3L by the Canadian team, ii) a pictorial EQ-5D-3L by the UK team, and iii) a pictorial EQ-5D-5L by the UK team. Each uses images to represent the different levels of the different dimensions. For example, the mobility dimension might show somebody walking around unaided, walking with aids, or in bed. I’m not going to try and describe what they all look like, so I’ll just encourage you to take a look at the Supplementary Material (click here to download it). All are described as ‘pilot’ instruments and shouldn’t be picked up and used at this stage. Different approaches were used in the development of the measures, and there are differences between the measures in terms of the images selected and the ways in which they’re presented. But each process referred to conventions in aphasia research, used input from clinicians, and consulted people with aphasia and/or their carers. The authors set out several remaining questions and avenues for future research. The most interesting possibility to most readers will be the notion that we could have a ‘generic’ pictorial format for the EQ-5D, which isn’t aphasia-specific. This will require continued development of the pictorial descriptive systems, and ultimately their validation.

QALYs in 2018—advantages and concerns. JAMA [PubMed] Published 24th May 2018

It’s difficult not to feel sorry for the authors of this article – and indeed all US-based purveyors of economic evaluation in health care. With respect to social judgments about the value of health technologies, the US’s proverbial head remains well and truly buried in the sand. This article serves as a primer and an enticement for the use of QALYs. The ‘concerns’ cited relate almost exclusively to decision rules applied to QALYs, rather than the underlying principles of QALYs, presumably because the authors didn’t feel they could ignore the points made by QALY opponents (even if those arguments are vacuous). What it boils down to is this: trade-offs are necessary, and QALYs can be used to promote value in those trade-offs, so unless you offer some meaningful alternative then QALYs are here to stay. Thankfully, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) has recently added some clout to the undeniable good sense of QALYs, so the future is looking a little brighter. Suck it up, America!

The impact of hospital costing methods on cost-effectiveness analysis: a case study. PharmacoEconomics [PubMed] Published 22nd May 2018

Plugging different cost estimates into your cost-effectiveness model could alter the headline results of your evaluation. That might seems obvious, but there are a variety of ways in which the selection of unit costs might be somewhat arbitrary or taken for granted. This study considers three alternative sources of information for hospital-based unit costs for hip fractures in England: (a) spell-level tariffs, (b) finished consultant episode (FCE) reference costs, and (c) spell-level reference costs. Source (b) provides, in theory, a more granular version of (a), describing individual episodes within a person’s hospital stay. Reference costs are estimated on the basis of hospital activity, while tariffs are prices estimated on the basis of historic reference costs. The authors use a previously reported cohort state transition model to evaluate different models of care for hip fracture and explore how the use of the different cost figures affects their results. FCE-level reference costs produced the highest total first-year hospital care costs (£14,440), and spell-level tariffs the lowest (£10,749). The more FCEs within a spell, the greater the discrepancy. This difference in costs affected ICERs, such that the net-benefit-optimising decision would change. The study makes an important point – that selection of unit costs matters. But it isn’t clear why the difference exists. It could just be due to a lack of precision in reference costs in this context (rather than a lack of accuracy, per se), or it could be that reference costs misestimate the true cost of care across the board. Without clear guidance on how to select the most appropriate source of unit costs, these different costing methodologies represent another source of uncertainty in modelling, which analysts should consider and explore.

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