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.
What goes wrong with the allocation of domestic and international resources for HIV? Health Economics [PubMed] Published 7th July 2017
Investment in foreign aid is coming under considered scrutiny as a number of leading western economies re-evaluate their role in the world and their obligations to countries with developing economies. Therefore, it is important for those who believe in the benefits of such investments to show that they are being done efficiently. This paper looks at how funding for HIV is distributed both domestically and internationally across countries, using multivariate regression analysis with instruments to control for reverse causality between financing and HIV prevalence, and domestic and international financing. The author is also concerned about countries free riding on international aid and estimates how countries ought to be allocating national resources to HIV using quintile regression to estimate what countries have fiscal space for expanding their current spending domestically. The results of the study show that domestic expenditure relative to GDP per capita is almost unit elastic, whereas it is inelastic with regards to HIV prevalence. Government effectiveness (as defined by the World Bank indices) has a statistically significant effect on domestic expenditure, although it is nonlinear, with gains more likely when moving up from a lower level of government effectiveness. International expenditure is inversely related to GDP per capita and HIV prevalence, and positively with government effectiveness, albeit the regression models for international expenditure had poor explanatory power. Countries with higher GDP per capita tended to dedicate more money towards HIV, however, the author reckons there is $3bn of fiscal space in countries such as South Africa and Nigeria to contribute more to HIV, freeing up international aid for other countries such as Cameroon, Ghana, Thailand, Pakistan and Columbia. The author is concerned that countries with higher GDP should be able to allocate more to HIV, but feels there are improvements to be made in how international aid is distributed too. Although there is plenty of food for thought in this paper, I was left wondering how this analysis can help in aiding a better allocation of resources. The normative model of what funding for HIV ought to be is from the viewpoint that this is the sole objective of countries of allocating resources, which is clearly contestable (the author even casts doubt as to whether this is true for international funding of HIV). Perhaps the other demands faced by national governments (e.g. funding for other diseases, education etc.) can be better reflected in future research in this area.
Can pay-for-performance to primary care providers stimulate appropriate use of antibiotics? Health Economics [PubMed] [RePEc] Published 7th July 2017
Antibiotic resistance is one of the largest challenges facing global health this century. This study from Sweden looks to see whether pay for performance (P4P) can have a role in the prescription practices of GPs when it comes to treating children with respiratory tract infection. P4P was introduced on a staggered basis across a number of regions in Sweden to incentivise primary care to use narrow spectrum penicillin as a first line treatment, as it is said to have a smaller impact on resistance. Taking advantage of data from the Swedish Prescribed Drug Register between 2006-2013, the authors conducted a difference in difference regression analysis to show the effect P4P had on the share of the incentivised antibiotic. They find a positive main effect of P4P on drug prescribing of 1.1 percentage points, that is also statistically significant. Of interest, the P4P in Sweden under analysis here was not directly linked to salaries of GPs but the health care centre. Although there are a number of limitations with the study that the authors clearly highlight in the discussion, it is a good example of how to make the most of routinely available data. It also highlights that although the share of the less resistant antibiotic went up, the national picture of usage of antibiotics did not reduce in line with a national policy aimed at doing so during the same time period. Even though Sweden is reported to be one of the lower users of antibiotics in Europe, it highlights the need to carefully think through how targets are achieved and where incentives might help in some areas to meet such targets.
Econometric modelling of multiple self-reports of health states: the switch from EQ-5D-3L to EQ-5D-5L in evaluating drug therapies for rheumatoid arthritis. Journal of Health Economics Published 4th July 2017
The EQ-5D is the most frequently used health state descriptive system for the generation of utility values for quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) in economic evaluation. To improve sensitivity and reduce floor and ceiling effects, the EuroQol team developed a five level version (5L) compared to the previous three level (3L) version. This study adds to recent evidence in this area of the unforeseen consequences of making this change to the descriptive system and also the valuation system used for the 5L. Using data from the National Data Bank for Rheumatic Diseases, where both 3L and 5L versions were completed simultaneously alongside other clinical measures, the authors construct a mapping between both versions of EQ-5D, informed by the response levels and the valuation systems that have been developed in the UK for the measures. They also test their mapping estimates on a previous economic evaluation for rheumatoid arthritis treatments. The descriptive results show that although there is a high correlation between both versions, and the 5L version achieves its aim of greater sensitivity, there is a systematic difference in utility scores generated using both versions, with an average 87% of the score of the 3L recorded compared to the 5L. Not only are there differences highlighted between value sets for the 3L and 5L but also the responses to dimensions across measures, where the mobility and pain dimensions do not align as one would expect. The new mapping developed in this paper highlights some of the issues with previous mapping methods used in practice, including the assumption of independence of dimension levels from one another that was used while the new valuation for the 5L was being developed. Although the case study they use to demonstrate the effect of using the different approaches in practice did not result in a different cost-effectiveness result, the study does manage to highlight that the assumption of 3L and 5L versions being substitutes for one another, both in terms of descriptive systems and value sets, does not hold. Although the authors are keen to highlight the benefits of their new mapping that produces a smooth distribution from actual to predicted 5L, decision makers will need to be clear about what descriptive system they now want for the generation of QALYs, given the discrepancies between 3L and 5L versions of EQ-5D, so that consistent results are obtained from economic evaluations.
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