Protocol for an economic evaluation and budget impact assessment of a randomised, stepped-wedge controlled trial for practice change support to increase routine provision of antenatal care for maternal alcohol consumption.

Abstract

Background: Antenatal clinical practice guidelines recommend routine assessment of women’s alcohol consumption during pregnancy. The delivery of advice and referral when necessary are also recommended. However, evidence suggests there are barriers to the uptake of best-care guidelines. Effective, cost-effective and affordable implementation strategies are needed to ensure the intended benefit of guidelines are realized through addressing identified barriers. This paper describes the protocol for evaluating the efficiency and affordability of a practice change intervention compared to usual practice in an implementation trial. Methods: The effectiveness of the intervention will be evaluated in a stepped-wedge randomised controlled implementation trial, conducted in an Australian setting. An economic evaluation will be conducted alongside the trial to assess intervention efficiency. Budget impact assessment will be conducted to assess affordability. The prospective trial-based economic evaluation will identify, measure and value key resource and outcome impacts arising from the multi-strategy practice change intervention compared with usual practice. The evaluation will comprise: (i) a cost-consequence analyses, where a score card approach will be used to show the costs and benefits given the multiple primary outcomes included in the trial; and (ii) a cost effectiveness analyses, where the primary outcome will be incremental cost per percent increase in participants reporting receipt of antenatal care for maternal alcohol consumption consistent with guideline recommendations. Intervention affordability will be evaluated using budget impact assessment and will estimate the financial implications of adoption and diffusion of this implementation strategy from the perspective of relevant fund-holders. Results will be extrapolated to estimate the cost and cost-effectiveness of rolling out the model of care. Discussion: Uptake of clinical guidelines requires practice change support. It is hypothesized that the implementation strategy, if found to be effective, will also be cost-effective, affordable and scalable. This protocol describes the economic evaluation that will address these hypotheses.