Climate change and environmental factors have an impact on human health and the ecosystem. The healthcare sector is responsible for substantial environmental pollution. Most healthcare systems rely on economic evaluation to select efficient alternatives. Nevertheless, environmental spillovers of healthcare treatments are rarely considered whether it is from a cost or a health perspective. The objective of this article is to identify economic evaluations of healthcare products and guidelines that have included any environmental dimensions.
Electronic searches of 3 literature databases (PubMed, Scopus, and EMBASE) and official health agencies guidelines were conducted. Documents were considered eligible if they assessed the environmental spillovers within the economic evaluation of a healthcare product or provided any recommendations on the inclusion of environmental spillovers in the health technology assessment process.
From the 3878 records identified, 62 documents were deemed eligible and 18 were published in 2021 and 2022. The environmental spillovers considered were carbon dioxide (CO ) emissions, water or energy consumption, and waste disposal. The environmental spillovers were mainly assessed using the lifecycle assessment (LCA) approach while the economic analysis was mostly limited to costs. Only 9 documents, including the guidelines of 2 health agencies presented theoretical and practical ways to include environmental spillovers into the decision-making process.
There is a clear lack of methods on whether environmental spillovers should be included in health economic evaluation and how this should be done. If healthcare systems want to reduce their environment footprint, the development of methodology which integrates environmental dimensions in health technology assessment will be key.