HIQA’s CEA of Breast Screening: Pragmatic Policy Recommendations are Welcome, but ACERs Reported as ICERs are Not

Abstract

The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) is Ireland’s statutory cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) agency. It recently published a CEA of screening strategies for women at elevated risk of breast cancer. Although the strategies recommended by HIQA exceed Ireland’s cost-effectiveness threshold, they can reasonably be welcomed as a pragmatic response to constraints on disinvestment and are expected to improve screening cost-effectiveness. What is not welcome, however, is HIQA’s reporting of average cost-effectiveness ratios (ACERs) as incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs). The distinction between ACERs and ICERs is well understood in CEA, as is the fact that ICERs not ACERs are the appropriate metric to determine cost-effectiveness. This article critiques HIQA’s reporting, considering the implications for the particular case of breast cancer screening and the broader context of consistency of and confidence in CEA as a guide to resource allocation in Ireland. The reporting of ACERs as ICERs is unlikely to be of any great significance in the particular case of screening women at elevated risk of breast cancer, given likely constraints on disinvestment. Despite this, ICERs still need to be reported correctly. If thresholds are exceeded in certain cases, then it is important that decision makers appreciate by how much. More generally, using ACERs in some cases and ICERs in others raises concerns that methods are being applied inconsistently, which risks compromising confidence in CEA in Ireland. As Ireland’s statutory CEA authority, HIQA has a special onus of responsibility to ensure established methods are applied correctly.