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.
Informal care: choice or constraint. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences [PubMed] Published 12th April 2017
The provision of social care in the UK has become a major economic issue, with recent increases in government spending and local authority taxation to help ease the burden on both the health and social care system in the short term. This study examines some of the issues surrounding informal carers (i.e. care of a family member), estimated to be approximately 10% of the UK population. In particular, it focuses on the role of choice and constraints involved with the decision to become a carer. Using a cross-sectional survey for a UK city, choice of caring was explored in terms of responses to care provision provided, asking if it was a free choice initially to provide care, and if there were constraints in terms of duty, lack of others or financial resources for paid care. The analysis focused on how perceived choice in the caring role was associated with socio-demographics and the type of caring role performed, as well as the role of perceived choice in caring and their wellbeing. Out of the 798 respondents to all four questions on caring choice, about 1 in 3 reported an entirely free choice in the decision, with half reporting having a free choice but also a constraint in terms of duty, other available carers or financial resources. Less than 1 in 5 reported not having a free choice. Only carers with bad health or receiving state benefits had an association with a constrained caring role. The more intense the care role was also associated with a more constrained choice. Higher levels of choice were associated with higher levels of wellbeing across measures of happiness, life satisfaction and capability. In multivariable regression analysis, it was found that having a free choice in the initial caring decision resulted in a higher impact on life satisfaction than educational qualifications and home ownership, whilst improved capability of comparable levels to that of home ownership, all else being equal. The authors thus recommend enhanced choice as a way for policy to improve carers wellbeing. Although the authors acknowledge limitations with the study design being cross-sectional and geographically limited to one city, the study shows there is plenty of scope for understanding the determinants of informal caring and consequences for those carers in much greater detail in future national surveys to help address policy in this area in the medium to longer term.
Experienced utility or decision utility for QALY calculation? Both. Public Health Ethics [PhilPapers] Published 6th May 2017
How health states should be valued in population health metrics, like QALYs and DALYs, will not be an unfamiliar topic of discussion for regular readers of this blog. Instead of arguing for decision utility (i.e. accounting for general population preferences for avoiding health states) or experienced utility (i.e. accounting for patient experiences of health states), the authors in this paper argue for a combined approach, reviving a suggestion previously put forward by Lowenstein & Ubel. The authors neatly summarise some of the issues of relying on either decision utility or experienced utility approaches alone and instead argue for better informed decision utility exercises by using deliberative democracy methods where experienced utility in health states are also presented. Unfortunately, there is little detail of how this process might actually work in practice. There are likely to be issues of what patient experiences are presented in such an exercise and how other biases that may influence decision utility responses are controlled for in such an approach. Although I am generally in favour of more deliberative approaches to elicit informed values for resource allocation, I find that this paper makes a convincing case for neither of the utility approaches to valuation, rather than both.
The value of different aspects of person-centred care: a series of discrete choice experiments in people with long-term conditions. BMJ Open [PubMed] Published 26th April 2017
The term “person-centred care” is one which is gaining some prominence in how healthcare is provided. What it means, and how important different aspects of person-centred care are, is explored in this study using discrete choice experiments (DCEs). Through focus groups and drawing from the authors’ own experience in this area, four aspects of person-centred care for self-management of chronic conditions make up the attributes in the DCE across two levels: (i) information (same information for all/personalised information); (ii) situation (little account of current situation/suggestions that fit current situation); (iii) living well (everyone wants the same from life/works with patient for what they want from life); (iv) communication (neutral professional way/friendly professional way). A cost attribute was also attached to the DCE that was given to patient groups with chronic pain and chronic lung disease. The overall findings suggest that person-centred care focused on situation and living well were valued most with personal communication style valued the least. Latent class analysis also suggested that 1 in 5 of those sampled valued personalised information the most. Those with lower earnings were likely to look to reduce the cost attribute the most. The authors conclude that the focus on communication in current clinician training on person-centred care may not be what is of most value to patients. However, I am not entirely convinced by this argument, as it could be that communication was not seen as an issue by the respondents, perhaps somewhat influenced due to the skills clinicians already have obtained in this area. Clearly, these process aspects of care are difficult to develop attributes for in DCEs, and the authors acknowledge that the wording of the “neutral” and “high” levels may have biased responses. I also found that dropping the “negative” third level for each of the attributes unconvincing. It may have proved more difficult to complete than two levels, but it would have shown in much greater depth how much value is attached to the four attributes relative to one another.
Credits
