Cost Effectiveness of Contracting Out Vaccination Services in Two Districts of Sindh, Pakistan

Remote Health Interventions: Effectiveness, Cost, and Cost-Effectiveness Considerations.

Cost Effectiveness of Achieving Targets of Low-Density Lipoprotein Particle Number Versus Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol Level

The competitive worldwide economic environment and ever-increasing costs of health care have created a setting in which understanding costs and making sure that we achieve good value in health care are paramount. One approach to seeking value is through the use of cost-effectiveness analysis. Although this science is now several decades old, it has been refined over the last several years, with increasingly sophisticated statistical and standardized methods.1,2 Is cost-effectiveness analysis useful? Does it help in medical decision making and in allocation of scarce resources? In the accompanying article, “Cost, Effectiveness, and Cost-Effectiveness” Diamond and Kaul3 argue that cost-effectiveness analysis is not a useful approach. Although we agree with many of the points that Diamond and Kaul raise, we do not agree with their conclusion. Cost-effectiveness analysis involves an assessment of both cost and effectiveness. The distribution of each needs to be understood. A cost-effectiveness analysis is only as valid as its underlying measures of effectiveness and cost, a discussion that is beyond the scope of this article. However, the methods to make these assessments vary considerably. There are standards for cost-effectiveness, but at times, perfectly adhering to these standards is not realistic, and compromises are often made that may be entirely scientifically legitimate.4 Cost-effectiveness is, by nature, incremental. Thus, it is necessary to look at the added costs compared with a control group. Selection of the appropriate control group is a challenge itself. At times, the appropriate control is placebo, and at other times, it is active therapy; the appropriate control is dependent on the clinical question being asked. However, when cost-effectiveness analysis is conducted using data from a clinical trial, the selection of the control group will not be a decision that the analyst can affect (at least after the trial has been completed). When …

Automated text message reminders to promote good health

Is Unilateral Cochlear Implantation Cost‐Effective for the Treatment of Bilateral Sensorineural Hearing Loss?

Cost-effectiveness analysis in cardiac surgery: A review of its concepts and methodologies

BackgroundThis study aimed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a breast cancer screening programme that incorporates genetic testing using breast cancer associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), against the current biennial mammogram-only screening programme to aid in its implementation into the current programme in Singapore.MethodsA Markov model was used to compare the costs and health outcomes of the current screening programme, against a polygenic risk-tailored screening programme, which can advise a long-term screening strategy depending on the individual’s polygenic risk. The model took the perspective of the healthcare system, with a time horizon of 40 years, following women from the age of 35 to 74. Epidemiological and cost data were taken from Asian studies, and an annual discount rate of 3% was used. The model outcome was the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER), calculated from the difference in costs per quality-adjusted life year (QALY). Scenarios with varying risk thresholds for each polygenic risk group were examined. One-way and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were performed to assess parameter uncertainty.ResultsThe ICER for a polygenic risk-tailored breast cancer screening programme, compared with the current biennial mammogram-only screening programme, was − 3713.80 SGD/QALY, with incremental costs < 0 and incremental effects > 0. The scenario analysis of different polygenic risk cutoffs showed that the ICERs remain negative, with all ICERs falling within the south-east quadrant of the cost-effectiveness plane, indicating that tailored screening is more cost effective than mammogram-only screening, with lower costs and higher QALYs to be gained. This suggests that a polygenic risk-tailored breast cancer screening programme is cost effective, entailing lower cost than the current mammogram-only programme, while causing no additional harm to women.ConclusionResults from this cost-effectiveness analysis show that polygenic risk-tailored screening is cost effective with an ICER of − 3713.80 SGD/QALY. Tailored screening remains cost effective even across varying percentile cutoffs for each risk group. While the results look promising for incorporating polygenic risk into the current breast cancer screening programme, further studies should be conducted to address various limitations.

Lack of cost-effectiveness of omalizumab

The pursuit of efficiency in the healthcare sector requires priority to be given to those treatments which provide the greatest benefit per unit of cost. Alternative interventions often have to...

Since their commercial introduction in 2003, drug-eluting stents (DES) have rapidly altered the management of coronary artery disease. Before their development, the percutaneous management of coronary artery disease was performed predominantly by implantation of bare metal stents (BMS) made of either surgical stainless steel or metal alloys. Although such stents represented a considerable advance over balloon angioplasty alone, they remained limited by restenosis resulting from neointimal proliferation. As a result, ≈15% to 20% of patients treated with BMS required ≥1 repeat revascularization procedure within the 6 to 12 months after stent implantation.1 Despite numerous attempts at systemic pharmacotherapy, device modification, and even use of ionizing radiation, the rate of restenosis after BMS implantation remained largely unaffected. Response by Eisenberg p 1744 Over the past 5 years, effective DES have become the first device to substantially reduce the incidence of restenosis after stent implantation. By delivering high concentrations of either antiproliferative or immunomodulatory compounds directly to the site of arterial injury and by controlling this delivery through polymer-based drug release, both sirolimus- and paclitaxel-eluting stents have safely and effectively inhibited the proliferative process that results in in-stent restenosis. In pivotal clinical trials, both sirolimus- and paclitaxel-eluting stents have reduced rates of angiographic restenosis by 70% to 90% compared with conventional BMS designs, with parallel reductions in the need for clinically driven target vessel revascularization (TVR).2–4 As a result, in April 2003, DES were approved for use in clinical practice in the United States. Within 9 months of their introduction, DES made up 35% of all stent implantations in the United States,5 and their use has increased rapidly since that time. At our own institution, DES comprised >85% of all stents implanted during the past year, and national estimates are that >90% of all percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures …

Cost-Effectiveness of Once-Weekly Selinexor, Bortezomib, and Dexamethasone (SVd) Versus Twice-Weekly Bortezomib and Dexamethasone (Vd) in Relapsed or Refractory Multiple Myeloma

This book succeeds in its aim of giving a simple and understandable presentation of a wide range of topics in health economics and an overview of statistical methods used in the analysis of cost-effectiveness data. As well as providing an excellent overview of parameters of interest in the health economics, it also presents recent methodological developments in this area. The book is designed for students in the final year undergraduate mathematics and statistics courses or postgraduate social sciences courses. It is also intended to serve as a reference for statisticians and health economists in academia and the pharmaceutical industry. Health economics is a relatively young discipline and there are plenty of recent methodological developments in this area. Parameters of interest in the cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) are difference between treatment arms with respect to effectiveness Δe, difference between treatment arms of mean costs over the duration if interest Δc, and variances and covariances of those estimators. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) is defined as Δc/Δe. If the measure of effectiveness is the probability of surviving then the ICE is cost of saving a life (or preventing a death). If the measure of effectiveness is mean survival or mean quality-adjusted survival, the ICER is the cost of achieving an extra year or quality adjusted year of life (QALY), respectively. In summary, the ICER is the cost of an additional unit of effectiveness if a new treatment is adopted over the standard treatment. This needs to be compared with what a policy maker is willing to pay (it is called willingness-to-pay) and is denoted by λ The cost effectiveness (CE) plane is a graph with the mean effectiveness Δe and mean cost over duration of interest Δc, plotted on horizontal and vertical axis, respectively. It is used for the interpretation of cost-effectiveness analyses. The plane has four quadrants: north east (NE), south west (SW), north west (NW) and south east (SE). Where Δe is positive (NE or SE quadrants), the new treatment is cost-effective if, and only if, the ICER<λ However, where Δe is negative (NW or SW quadrants), the new treatment is cost-effective if, and only if, the ICER>λ. Sometimes there are concerns when making statistical inference (e.g. interpretation of the confidence interval and problem with the ratio statistics) on the ICER, then the incremental net benefit (INB) approach can be applied where the INB is defined as Δeλ–Δc. The standard approach that includes the direct estimation of the parameters: mean incremental cost, effects, their variance and covariance required to formulate either the ICER or the net benefit statistics and it is described in Chapters 2–8. Modelling is another approach and involves the separate components of the CE equation, in order to build indirect estimates of incremental cost and effectiveness and it is presented in more details in Chapter 9. The starting chapter, Chapter 1, introduces the cost-effectiveness data, the cost-effectiveness plane, the ICER and INB. Chapter 2 is devoted to methods for estimating Δe and Δc and their variance and covariance for non-censored data while Chapter 3 deals with methods of estimation for the same parameters but only for censored data. Chapter 4 considers methods for estimating ICER and INB with their confidence intervals such as cost-effectiveness acceptability curves, bootstrap methods and the Bayesian approach. In Chapter 5, the methods from the previous chapters are illustrated with examples. The comprehensive review of sample size determination for cost-effectiveness trials using frequentist and Bayesian approach is described in Chapter 6. Regression methods for the covariate adjustment of cost-effectiveness analyses are reviewed in Chapter 7. The data from multinational and multicentre clinical trials in cost-effectiveness analyses are described in Chapter 8. Statistical modelling is involved in the estimation of cost-effectiveness parameters and presented in Chapter 9. This is an enormously useful book, concise and clearly written, which deserves to find readers among students of statistics and health economics, and researchers in academic and pharmaceutical environments. I enjoyed very much reading this book.

Pramipexole was recently approved in the US for treatment of the symptoms of idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD). Although pramipexole has been found to be safe and efficacious when compared with placebo, little data are yet available on its cost effectiveness when compared with baseline treatment. The aim of this study was to estimate the costs and cost effectiveness (cost utility) of pramipexole compared with baseline treatment in patients with early and advanced PD. We developed a cost-effectiveness (CE) model in the US setting that linked Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) Part II (activities of daily life) and III (motor) scores to disease progression, costs and patient utility. Data for the model were obtained from clinical trials, a literature review and a survey of 193 patients' health resource use and utility. We used cost and quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) estimates from the model to estimate the incremental cost effectiveness of pramipexole relative to baseline treatment patterns. We performed separate analyses for patients with early and advanced PD. We also performed extensive sensitivity analyses by adding other dopamine agonists to the no-pramipexole treatment regimen and varying disease progression parameters. The study was conducted from the societal perspective, although data presentation allows interpretation of cost effectiveness from either the societal or payer perspective. For patients with both early and advanced PD, treatment with pramipexole had higher costs but was more effective than baseline treatment. For patients with early onset of PD, the incremental total CE ratio for pramipexole was $US8837/QALY. For patients with advanced PD, the incremental CE ratio was $US12 294/QALY (1997 costs). These ratios were lower than the CE ratios of many widely used medical treatments. Subject to the inherent limitations of modelling chronic disease progression and subsequent healthcare costs and patient utility, the results suggested that pramipexole was a cost effective treatment for patients with early and advanced PD in the US.

BackgroundWith 249,007 new leprosy patients detected globally in 2008, it remains necessary to develop new and effective interventions to interrupt the transmission of M. leprae. We assessed the economic benefits of single dose rifampicin (SDR) for contacts as chemoprophylactic intervention in the control of leprosy.MethodsWe conducted a single centre, double blind, cluster randomised, placebo controlled trial in northwest Bangladesh between 2002 and 2007, including 21,711 close contacts of 1,037 patients with newly diagnosed leprosy. We gave a single dose of rifampicin or placebo to close contacts, with follow-up for four years. The main outcome measure was the development of clinical leprosy. We assessed the cost effectiveness by calculating the incremental cost effectiveness ratio (ICER) between the standard multidrug therapy (MDT) program with the additional chemoprophylaxis intervention versus the standard MDT program only. The ICER was expressed in US dollars per prevented leprosy case.FindingsChemoprophylaxis with SDR for preventing leprosy among contacts of leprosy patients is cost-effective at all contact levels and thereby a cost-effective prevention strategy. In total, $6,009 incremental cost was invested and 38 incremental leprosy cases were prevented, resulting in an ICER of $158 per one additional prevented leprosy case. It was the most cost-effective in neighbours of neighbours and social contacts (ICER $214), slightly less cost-effective in next door neighbours (ICER $497) and least cost-effective among household contacts (ICER $856).ConclusionChemoprophylaxis with single dose rifampicin given to contacts of newly diagnosed leprosy patients is a cost-effective intervention strategy. Implementation studies are necessary to establish whether this intervention is acceptable and feasible in other leprosy endemic areas of the world.

Background: Trastuzumab has achieved widespread approval and funding across much of the developed world for metastatic and, later, adjuvant HER2/neu positive breast cancer. This success may be attributed to a favorable therapeutic index and incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER). Has the success of trastuzumab been replicated by newer therapeutics? Methods: The societal marginal benefit gained from a new drug can be estimated by calculating the difference between the incremental quality-adjusted life-years gained (QALY) and the maximum willingness-to-pay (WTP) for the increase in health by society. A systematic review was employed to amass all English-language cost-effectiveness analyses (CEA) on small-molecule inhibitors and monoclonal antibodies approved for the treatment of solid malignancies. Searches of PubMed and EMBASE provided citations published between 1995 and February 5, 2012. Two reviewers each independently assessed the eligibility of all abstracts and subsequently abstracted data from published abstracts and manuscripts. CEAs comparing two experimental treatments to each other were excluded. Incremental costs and ICERs were converted from their native currency to U.S. dollars according to their average exchange-rates since publication. Results: Of the 1,576 citations identified, 60 were included in the final analysis. Tumor-types studied included breast, colorectal, gastric, gastrointestinal stromal, head and neck, non-small cell lung, ovarian, hepatocellular, and renal cancers, and pancreatic neuro-endocrine tumor. Studies originated from USA (14%), continental Europe (37%), England (12%), Canada (12%), Asia (11%), and Latin America (12%). Median WTP was $65,000 (range $30,000-$297,000). 92% of all CEAs included considered to be cost-effective by the CEA's authors. Trastuzumab was studied for breast cancer treatment by 13 CEAs in the adjuvant setting and by 3 CEAs in the metastatic setting. Trastuzumab is significantly more cost-effective than other targeted treatments (mean ICER $32,000 vs. $108,000, p = 0.001). 84% of trastuzumab studies found its ICER&amp;lt;$40,000, but only 32% of other CEAs met this threshold. Trastuzumab may be more cost-effective if employed in the adjuvant setting compared to the metastatic setting (mean ICER $18,000 vs. $29,000, p = 0.12). After trastuzumab, the most favorable treatments by ICER were imatinib for GIST, cetuximab with radiation for head and neck cancer, and sorafenib for hepatocellular carcinoma. There was no apparent relationship between the country of origin in which the CEA was conducted and the ICER estimate. Conclusion: Trastuzumab represents a significant achievement in clinical medicine and also provides greater value than newer targeted chemotherapy, in general. Newer therapeutics are being priced close to the maximum WTP of society. Adjuvant therapy may prove more cost-effective than therapy in the metastatic setting. Unless better pricing arrangements can be made or future therapies produce greater incremental clinical benefits for the same cost, it seems unlikely that the societal success of trastuzumab will be replicated. However, this analysis assumes that maximizing societal health, not profit, is of primary concern. Citation Information: Cancer Res 2012;72(24 Suppl):Abstract nr P5-15-02.