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.
Using discrete choice experiments with duration to model EQ-5D-5L health state preferences: testing experimental design strategies. Medical Decision Making [PubMed] Published 28th September 2016
DCEs are a bit in vogue for the purpose of health state valuation, so it was natural that EuroQol turned to it for valuation of the EQ-5D-5L. But previous valuation studies have highlighted challenges associated with this approach, some of which this paper now investigates. Central to the use of DCE in this way is the inclusion of a duration attribute to facilitate anchoring from 1 to dead. This study looks at the effect of increasing the options when it comes to duration, as previous studies were limited in this regard. In this study, possible durations were 6 months or 1, 2, 4, 7 or 10 years. 802 online survey respondents we presented with 10 DCE choice sets, and the resulting model had generally logically ordered coefficients. So the approach looks feasible, but it isn’t clear whether or not there are any real advantages to including more durations. Another issue is that the efficiency of the DCE design might be improved by introducing prior information from previous studies to inform the selection of health profiles – that is, by introducing non-zero prior values. With 800 respondents, this design resulted in more disordering with – for example – a positive coefficient on level 2 for the pain/discomfort dimension. This was not the expected result. However, the design included a far greater proportion of more difficult choices, which the authors suggest may have resulted in inconsistencies. An alternative way of increasing efficiency might be to use a 2-stage approach, whereby health profiles are selected and then durations are selected based on information from previous studies. Using the same number of pairs but a sample half the size (400), the 2-stage design seemed to work a treat. It’s a promising design that will no doubt see further research in this context.
Is the distribution of care quality provided under pay-for-performance equitable? Evidence from the Advancing Quality programme in England. International Journal for Equity in Health [PubMed] Published 23rd September 2016
Suppose a regional health care quality improvement initiative worked, but only for the well-off. Would we still support it? Maybe not, so it’s important to uncover for whom the policy is working. QOF is the most-studied pay-for-performance programme in England and it does not seem to have reduced health inequalities in the context of primary care. There is less evidence regarding P4P in hospital care, which is where this study comes in by looking at the Advancing Quality initiative across five different health conditions. Using individual-level data for 73,002 people, the authors model the probability of receiving a quality indicator according to income deprivation in their local area. There were 23 indicators altogether, across which the results were not consistent. Poorer patients were more likely to receive pre-surgical interventions for hip and knee replacements and for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). And poorer people were less likely to receive advice at discharge. On the other hand, for hip and knee replacement and CABG, richer people were more likely to receive diagnostic tests. The main finding is that there is no obvious systematic pro-poor or pro-rich bias in the effects of this pay-for-performance initiative in secondary care. This may not be a big surprise due to the limited amount of self-selection and self-direction for patients in secondary care, compared with primary care.
The impact of social security income on cognitive function at older ages. American Journal of Health Economics [RePEc] Published 19th September 2016
Income correlates with health, as we know. But it’s useful to be more specific – as this article is – in order to inform policy. So does more social security income improve cognitive function at older ages? The short answer is yes. And that wasn’t a foregone conclusion as there is some evidence that higher income leads to earlier retirement, which in turn can be detrimental to cognitive function. In this study the authors use changes in the Social Security Act in the US in the 1970s. Between 1972 and 1977, Congress messed up a bit and temporarily introduced a policy that made payments increase at a rate faster than inflation, which was therefore enjoyed by people born between 1910 and 1916, with a 5 year gradual transition until 1922. Unsurprisingly, this study follows many others that have made the most of this policy quirk. Data are taken from a longitudinal survey of older people, which includes a set of scores relating to cognition, with a sample of 4139 people. Using an OLS model, the authors estimate the association between Social Security income and cognition. Cognition is measured using a previously developed composite score with 3 levels: ‘normal’, ‘cognitively impaired’ and ‘demented’. To handle the endogeneity of income, an instrumental variable is constructed on the basis of year of birth to tie-in with the peak in benefit from the policy (n=673). In today’s money the beneficiary cohort received around $2000 extra. It’s also good to see the analysis extended to a quantile regression to see whereabouts in the cognition score distribution effects accrue. The additional income resulted in improvements in working memory, knowledge, languages and orientation and overall cognition. The effects are strong and clinically meaningful. A $1000 (in 1993 prices) increase in annual income lead to a 1.9 percentage point reduction in the likelihood of being classified as cognitively impaired. The effect is strongest for those with higher levels of cognition. The key take-home message here is that even in older populations, policy changes can be beneficial to health. It’s never too late.
Credits
I hope the EQ-5D-5L study referenced my paper…I already showed this phenomenon 🙂 Furthermore it’s actually potentially more severe than they realise – *any* highly efficient design (non-zero priors or not) can induce heuristics due to high cognitive burden.
Unfortunately I can’t see the full paper so don’t know…but Rose and Bliemer pointed out this possibility in 2009 and I conducted the first within-subject test, which showed the problem quite spectacularly. The study I’m involved with to pilot BWS for EQ-5D-5L goes beyond this and even on the pilot data is looking interesting in terms of results, given that we have ditched high efficiency as the be-all and end-all.