CONSOLIDATED HEALTH ECONOMIC EVALUATION REPORTING STANDARDS (CHEERS) STATEMENT

Don Husereau,Elizabeth Loder,Stavros Petrou,Chris Carswell,Michael Drummond,Andrew H Briggs,Josephine Mauskopf,David Moher,Dan Greenberg,Federico Augustovski

doi:10.1017/s0266462313000160

Abstract

Economic evaluations of health interventions pose a particular challenge for reporting. There is also a need to consolidate and update existing guidelines and promote their use in a user friendly manner. The Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS) statement is an attempt to consolidate and update previous health economic evaluation guidelines efforts into one current, useful reporting guidance. The primary audiences for the CHEERS statement are researchers reporting economic evaluations and the editors and peer reviewers assessing them for publication. The need for new reporting guidance was identified by a survey of medical editors. A list of possible items based on a systematic review was created. A two round, modified Delphi panel consisting of representatives from academia, clinical practice, industry, government, and the editorial community was conducted. Out of 44 candidate items, 24 items and accompanying recommendations were developed. The recommendations are contained in a user friendly, 24 item checklist. A copy of the statement, accompanying checklist, and this report can be found on the ISPOR Health Economic Evaluations Publication Guidelines Task Force website (www.ispor.org/TaskForces/EconomicPubGuidelines.asp). We hope CHEERS will lead to better reporting, and ultimately, better health decisions. To facilitate dissemination and uptake, the CHEERS statement is being co-published across 10 health economics and medical journals. We encourage other journals and groups, to endorse CHEERS. The author team plans to review the checklist for an update in five years.

Highlights

Background and objectivesPresent the study question and its relevance for health policy or practice decisions
Economic evaluations have been widely applied in health policy, including the assessment of prevention programmes, diagnostics, treatment interventions, organisation of care
Reporting challenges and shortcomings in health economic evaluations Compared with clinical studies, which report the consequences of an intervention only, economic evaluations require more reporting space for additional items, such as resource use, costs, preference related information, and cost effectiveness results

Summary

Introduction

Background and objectivesPresent the study question and its relevance for health policy or practice decisions. Economic evaluations have been widely applied in health policy, including the assessment of prevention programmes (such as vaccination, screening, and health promotion), diagnostics, treatment interventions (such as drugs and surgical procedures), organisation of care, Reporting challenges and shortcomings in health economic evaluations Compared with clinical studies, which report the consequences of an intervention only, economic evaluations require more reporting space for additional items, such as resource use, costs, preference related information, and cost effectiveness results. This creates challenges for editors, reviewers, and those who wish to scrutinise a study’s findings [3]. There is evidence that the quality of reporting of economic evaluations varies widely and could potentially benefit from improved quality assurance mechanisms [4,5]

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