Health Economics Flashcards
What are the main components of economic evaluation?
Inputs - costs
Outputs - benefits
What is an economic evaluation?
A study that compares the cost and benefits of two or more alternative interventions
What are the two types of costs?
Fixed costs - capital, overheads
Variable costs - resources used to treat patients
What is a semi-fixed costs?
Costs that increase with activity
What costs need to be included in an economic evaluation?
Costs depend on the perspective of the evaluation
Perspective - care setting: primary, secondary public sector
What are direct costs?
Direct costs are fixed and variable costs that are associated with delivering a health care intervention
Direct medical costs
Direct non medical costs
What are indirect costs?
Productivity losses because of illness or condition
Difficult to measure
What are intangiable costs?
This is the cost of anxiety, pain or suffering from an illness or treatment
What is an average cost?
Total cost of therapy divided by total quantity of treatment units provided
What is incremental cost?
The difference in cost that one service or programme imposes over another
What is marginal cost
The extra cost of one additional unit of product or service delivered
What outcomes are measured in economic evaluation?
Effectiveness
Quality of life
Utility
Expressing benefits as monetary values
What is effectiveness?
Outcome of an intervention or service measured in natural units
What are the general outcome measures of effectiveness?
Cases successfully diagnosed or treated
Mortality
Life years saved
Life years gained
Factors that impact on quality of life
Functional ability
Social interactions
Psychological well-being
Cognitive factors
Subjective factors
Two quality of life measures
Generic
Disease-specific
Advantages of disease specific measures
Domains are relevent to the disease under investigation
Could be useful tool to compare different interventions
Disadvantages of disease specific measures
Not relevant to other diseases
Cannot be used to benchmark against other diseases
Advantages of generic measures
Useful when looking at groups of patients who have different illnesses
Can compare outcomes in different patient groups
What are the core-domains around quality of life?
Physical functioning, physical role
Bodily pain, general health
Vitality, social functioning
Emotional role
Mental health
What is utility
The value attached by an individual for a specific level of health status of a specific health
Advantages of utility
When looking at groups of patients with different illnesses
Compare different outcomes in different patient groups
What is willingeness to pay?
Method to see how much someone would be willing to pay to avoid an illness or obtain the benefits of a treatment
Disadvantage of willingness to pay
Depends on the patient’s ability ot pay - people may be unemployed, in deprived areas etc
What are the different types of economic evaluation?
Cost effective analysis
Cost utility analysis
Cost benefit analysis
What is cost minimisation analysis?
The outcome of treatment is the same so you choose the least cost alternative
What is cost effectiveness analysis?
The outcome reported in a single unit of measurement measured in natural units
What is cost utility analysis?
The outcomes are expressed as QALYs
