Abstract
BackgroundEarly identification of people at elevated risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D) is an important step in preventing or delaying its onset. Pharmacies can serve as a significant channel to reach these people. This study aimed to assess the potential health economic impact of screening and recruitment services in pharmacies in referring people to preventive interventions.MethodsA decision analytic model was constructed to perform a cost-utility analysis of the expected national health economic consequences (in terms of costs and quality-adjusted life years, QALYs) of a hypothetical pharmacy-based service where people screened and recruited through pharmacies would participate in a digital lifestyle program. Cost-effectiveness was considered in terms of net monetary benefit (NMB). In addition, social return on investment (SROI) was calculated as the ratio of the intervention and recruitment costs and the net present value of expected savings. Payback time was the time taken to reach the break-even point in savings. In the base scenario, a 20-year time horizon was applied. Probabilistic and deterministic sensitivity analyses were applied to study robustness of the results.ResultsIn the base scenario, the expected savings from the pharmacy-based screening and recruitment among the reached target cohort were 255.3 m€ (95% CI − 185.2 m€ to 717.2 m€) in pharmacy visiting population meaning 1412€ (95% CI − 1024€ to 3967€) expected savings per person. Additionally, 7032 QALYs (95% CI − 1344 to 16,143) were gained on the population level. The intervention had an NMB of 3358€ (95% CI − 1397€ to 8431€) using a cost-effectiveness threshold of 50,000 €/QALY. The initial costs were 122.2 m€ with an SROI of 2.09€ (95% CI − 1.52€ to 5.88€). The expected payback time was 10 and 8 years for women and men, respectively. Results were most sensitive for changes in effectiveness of the intervention and selected discount rate.ConclusionsT2D screening and recruitment to prevention programs conducted via pharmacies was a dominant option providing both cost savings and QALY gains. The highest savings can be potentially reached by targeting recruitment at men at elevated risk of T2D.
Highlights
Diabetes is one of the most significant noncommunicable diseases with estimated 425 million adult patients in 2017 worldwide [1]
In the base case 3.8% of scenarios resulted in cost and Qualityadjusted life year (QALY) losses, 5% of the scenarios resulted in cost losses but QALY gains, 0.1% of the scenarios resulted in cost saving but QALY losses and 91.2% of the scenarios resulted in both cost savings and QALY gains
Our results indicate that pharmacies can serve as a cost saving channel to reach people at elevated risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D)
Summary
Diabetes is one of the most significant noncommunicable diseases with estimated 425 million adult patients in 2017 worldwide [1]. In addition to the increasing number of T2D patients, a major challenge is the number of people at risk of T2D or with undiagnosed T2D. Approximately 25% of the Finnish population have an elevated risk of developing T2D within the 10 years [4]. The efficacy of lifestyle interventions in the prevention of T2D has been shown in several studies [8, 9], one of the first being the Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study (DPS) [10]. Identification of people at elevated risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D) is an important step in preventing or delaying its onset. This study aimed to assess the potential health economic impact of screening and recruitment services in pharmacies in referring people to preventive interventions
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