Pharmacoeconomics Flashcards
What is Pharmacoeconomics?
Pharmacoeconomics is a discipline that aims to assess the impact of medicines on the health system, in terms of both costs and the health gains for the money spent
When buying the drug, the govt is really just what?
When buying the drug, the govt is really just buying the outcome. As such, the govt does not give two shits about anything else except for efficacy, tolerability and cost, i.e. the overall outcome. Most PE analysis takes the perspective of the govt, meaning they do not take into account the costs on patients themselves (e.g. driving to the doctors), only the money the govt has to spend
The opportunity cost is an economics term that can be simplified to?
What are you willing to forgo in order to buy something else? A patient example could be ‘What would you normally do with the time it takes to go to the pharmacy and get your meds?’ Meanwhile, a government application of this idea is: ‘If we buy this drug, what else can we spend this money on?’
What is meant by Opportunity Cost?
What is Important?
Any expenditure will be at the expense of something else.
Therefore, it is important for a company to display that their drug is cost effective, or else if the government were to consider buying it, they would be missing out on too much to gain relatively little outcomes and so they won’t buy your shitty drug
What are the Types of Costs?
Direct Costs (products and services consumed)
Indirect Costs (productivity)
Intangible Costs
Types of Costs: What are Direct Costs?
Medical (drugs, fees for professional services, diagnostic tests, hospitalisation, ADRs)
Non-medical (transportation to hospital)
Types of Costs: What are Indirect Costs?
Morbidity and mortality
Types of Costs: What are Intangible Costs?
Pain, suffering and grief; hard to quantify
What is Quality of Life (QoL)?
Quality of life (QoL) refers to the overall functional effect of an illness upon a patient, as perceived by patients in similar situations
QoL is comprised of what?
Physical functioning: e.g. how much can they move, do activities etc.
Psychological functioning: e.g. anxiety, depression, happiness with life etc.
Social functions: e.g. ability to maintain social relationships or work productively.
Quality of life is rated on a scale of what?
Of 0 to 1. 0 being dead, and 1 being perfectly healthy. If QoL is less than 0, this refers to a state worse than death
What are QALYs?
Quality adjusted life years (QALYs) are a combination of life years extended and the quality of life during those years
How do you Calculate QALY?
Number of Years Gained * QoL of those years
What are DALYs?
Disability adjusted life years (DALYs) are a measure of the burden of disease and are not related to medications/interventions – only the disease itself. DALYs give an idea of the years of life lost to living in disability
As the government is interested in buying outcomes, they need to be able to quantify these somehow. Outcomes can be either?
Clinical: life years gained, decrease in blood pressure, decrease in blood glucose (Natural Units)
Humanistic: quality of life, as reported by the patient.