Birmingham, UK - With rising health care costs, value for money assessments play an important role in determining which health care interventions are provided. Value for money assessments should consider the resources used in the intervention and the full health impact of that intervention. This normally includes considering hard-to-measure costs and benefits for carers.
A recent study "
The inclusion of informal care in applied economic evaluation: a review," published in
Value in Health, investigates whether value for money assessments are considering the costs and benefits of health care interventions on carers. The authors found that very few assessments considered carer costs or outcomes, but those that did showed carer impact played an important role in determining whether an intervention was good value for money.
The study was co-authored by Kacey Goodrich, Billingsley Kaambwa and Hareth Al-Janabi at the University of Birmingham. Dr. Al-Janabi says "Practice is lagging behind theory when it comes to including the impacts on carers in health economic evaluations. Our review suggests value for money assessments can be highly sensitive to the impacts on carers and so we would urge researchers to consider these impacts in their evaluations, either in the main analysis, or in a sensitivity analysis."
Value in Health (ISSN 1098-3015) publishes papers, concepts, and ideas that advance the field of pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research as well as policy papers to help health care leaders make evidence-based decisions. The journal is published bi-monthly and has over 8,000 subscribers (clinicians, decision-makers, and researchers worldwide).
International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) is a nonprofit, international, educational and scientific organization that strives to increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and fairness of health care resource use to improve health.
For more information: www.ispor.org