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 HTA and guideline development as a tool for research priority setting the NICE way: reducing research waste by identifying the right research to fund. BMJ Open [PubMed] Published 8th March 2018
As well as the cost-effectiveness of health care, economists are increasingly concerned with the cost-effectiveness of health research. This makes sense, given that both are usually publicly funded and so spending on one (in principle) limits spending on the other. NICE exists in part to prevent waste in the provision of health care – seeking to maximise benefit. In this paper, the authors (all current or ex-employees of NICE) consider the extent to which NICE processes are also be used to prevent waste in health research. The study focuses on the processes underlying NICE guideline development and HTA, and the work by NICE’s Science Policy and Research (SP&R) programme. Through systematic review and (sometimes) economic modelling, NICE guidelines identify research needs, and NICE works with the National Institute for Health Research to get their recommended research commissioned, with some research fast-tracked as ‘NICE Key Priorities’. Sometimes, it’s also necessary to prioritise research into methodological development, and NICE have conducted reviews to address this, with the Internal Research Advisory Group established to ensure that methodological research is commissioned. The paper also highlights the roles of other groups such as the Decision Support Unit, Technical Support Unit and External Assessment Centres. This paper is useful for two reasons. First, it gives a clear and concise explanation of NICE’s processes with respect to research prioritisation, and maps out the working groups involved. This will provide researchers with an understanding of how their work fits into this process. Second, the paper highlights NICE’s current research priorities and provides insight into how these develop. This could be helpful to researchers looking to develop new ideas and proposals that will align with NICE’s priorities.
The impact of the minimum wage on health. International Journal of Health Economics and Management [PubMed] Published 7th March 2018
The minimum wage is one of those policies that is so far-reaching, and with such ambiguous implications for different people, that research into its impact can deliver dramatically different conclusions. This study uses American data and takes advantage of the fact that different states have different minimum wage levels. The authors try to look at a broad range of mechanisms by which minimum wage can affect health. A major focus is on risky health behaviours. The study uses data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which includes around 300,000 respondents per year across all states. Relevant variables from these data characterise smoking, drinking, and fruit and vegetable consumption, as well as obesity. There are also indicators of health care access and self-reported health. The authors cut their sample to include 21-64-year-olds with no more than a high school degree. Difference-in-differences are estimated by OLS according to individual states’ minimum wage changes. As is often the case for minimum wage studies, the authors find several non-significant effects: smoking and drinking don’t seem to be affected. Similarly, there isn’t much of an impact on health care access. There seems to be a small positive impact of minimum wage on the likelihood of being obese, but no impact on BMI. I’m not sure how to interpret that, but there is also evidence that a minimum wage increase leads to a reduction in fruit and vegetable consumption, which adds credence to the obesity finding. The results also demonstrate that a minimum wage increase can reduce the number of days that people report to be in poor health. But generally – on aggregate – there isn’t much going on at all. So the authors look at subgroups. Smoking is found to increase (and BMI decrease) with minimum wage for younger non-married white males. Obesity is more likely to be increased by minimum wage hikes for people who are white or married, and especially for those in older age groups. Women seem to benefit from fewer days with mental health problems. The main concerns identified in this paper are that minimum wage increases could increase smoking in young men and could reduce fruit and veg consumption. But I don’t think we should overstate it. There’s a lot going on in the data, and though the authors do a good job of trying to identify the effects, other explanations can’t be excluded. Minimum wage increases probably don’t have a major direct impact on health behaviours – positive or negative – but policymakers should take note of the potential value in providing public health interventions to those groups of people who are likely to be affected by the minimum wage.
Aligning policy objectives and payment design in palliative care. BMC Palliative Care [PubMed] Published 7th March 2018
Health care at the end of life – including palliative care – presents challenges in evaluation. The focus is on improving patients’ quality of life, but it’s also about satisfying preferences for processes of care, the experiences of carers, and providing a ‘good death’. And partly because these things can be difficult to measure, it can be difficult to design payment mechanisms to achieve desirable outcomes. Perhaps that’s why there is no current standard approach to funding for palliative care, with a lot of variation between countries, despite the common aspiration for universality. This paper tackles the question of payment design with a discussion of the literature. Traditionally, palliative care has been funded by block payments, per diems, or fee-for-service. The author starts with the acknowledgement that there are two challenges to ensuring value for money in palliative care: moral hazard and adverse selection. Providers may over-supply because of fee-for-service funding arrangements, or they may ‘cream-skim’ patients. Adverse selection may arise in an insurance-based system, with demand from high-risk people causing the market to fail. These problems could potentially be solved by capitation-based payments and risk adjustment. The market could also be warped by blunt eligibility restrictions and funding caps. Another difficulty is the challenge of achieving allocative efficiency between home-based and hospital-based services, made plain by the fact that, in many countries, a majority of people die in hospital despite a preference for dying at home. The author describes developments (particularly in Australia) in activity-based funding for palliative care. An interesting proposal – though not discussed in enough detail – is that payments could be made for each death (per mortems?). Capitation-based payment models are considered and the extent to which pay-for-performance could be incorporated is also discussed – the latter being potentially important in achieving those process outcomes that matter so much in palliative care. Yet another challenge is the question of when palliative care should come into play, because, in some cases, it’s a matter of sooner being better, because the provision of palliative care can give rise to less costly and more preferred treatment pathways. Thus, palliative care funding models will have implications for the funding of acute care. Throughout, the paper includes examples from different countries, along with a wealth of references to dig into. Helpfully, the author explicitly states in a table the models that different settings ought to adopt, given their prevailing model. As our population ages and the purse strings tighten, this is a discussion we can expect to be having more and more.
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