RESS lectures term 3 Flashcards
what are the 4 key economic concepts used in Health Economics?
- opportunity costs
- economic efficiency
- marginal analysis
- equity
what are the three main types of Economic Evaluation?
what’s the difference between them?
which is mainly used by NICE?
cost benefit analysis (CBA)
- everything is given a monetary value
cost effectiveness analysis (CEA)
- uses natural units (eg number of cases detected)
cost utility analysis (CUA)
- uses QALYs
- NICE mainly uses
main difference between these is how outcomes are measured
nb other less used ones are:
- cost-consequence analysis (CCA)
- cost-minimisation analysis (CMA)
what is the definition of opportunity cost?
the value of forgone benefit which could be obtained from a resource in its next best alternative use
(ie the loss of other alternatives when one alternative is chosen)
what are the two different types of efficiency?
what’s the difference?
technical efficiency:
- meeting a given objective at least cost possible/how best to deliver a programme (or achieve a given objective)
- eg shall surgery for tonsillectomy be provided by way of day surgery or inpatient surgery?
allocative efficiency:
- whether to allocate resources to a programme or whether to allocate more or less resources to it
- eg shall surgery for tonsillectomy be provided or an outpatient clinic for asthma?
what is does marginal analysis involve?
comparing the benefit from the ‘next step’ (marginal benefit) with the cost of taking the next step (marginal cost)
nb not interested in average benefit or cost, looking at incremental changes and where to draw the line until we are not prepared to accept the size of the marginal benefit for said high marginal cost
what is the difference between equity and efficiency?
efficiency looks at the total benefit without considering who actually benefits
equity is another criterion for allocating resources based on what benefits matter most to society
- concerned with the fairness or justice of the distribution of costs and benefits
for something to be considered to be a FULL economic evaluation what two criteria must it fulfill?
- both costs and consequences are considered
- must be comnparison of two or more alternatives (even if other one is ‘do nothing’)
what does dominance mean (in health economics)?
the intervention costs less and is, at least, as effective as the comparator
basically it’s cheaper and probably better so is a no-brainer in terms of funding
cost effectiveness analysis (CEA)
- how does it measure outcomes?
- pros?
- cons?
measures outcomes using ‘natural units’
- eg lives saved, symptom free days etc
pros:
- clear/easily understandable by lay person
- common/popular
cons:
- many healthcare programmes have multiple objectives, hard to compare: no clear idea of the relative importance between them
- secondary outcomes are not included, eg side effects/unintended consequences etc
cost benefit analysis (CBA):
- what outcome does it measure?
- pros?
- cons?
outcomes measured in monetary terms, everything converted to having a monetary value
pros:
- can make comparrisons outside of health, eg with education
cons:
- difficulty with valuation of health outcomes in monetary terms, so many variables, stuff is more valuable to some people than others etc
cost utility analysis (CUA):
- how are outcomes measured?
- pros?
- cons?
outcomes measured in Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) gained
- combines life years and quality of those years (mortality + morbidity)
pros:
- measures quality + quantity of life gained
- easily comparable across treatment areas
- measure includes effects of side effects/inintended secondary outcomes
cons:
- calculating QALYs is time-consuming + costly
- dependent on method/scale used (different questionnaires may give different outcomes)
- equity issues, more QALYs to gain, may favour well over sick, genders, social class etc
QALYs:
- definition of one QALY?
- QALY when dead?
one QALY = one year of life lived in ‘perfect’ health
0 = dead
- nb can get negative values with questionnaire (ie suffering is worse than being dead)
give an example of a questionaire used to calculate quality of life, and thus QALYs?
EQ-5D
what is HES?
what’s it used for?
hospital episode statistics
- statistics collected by all hospitals in the NHS about out-patients/in-patients/maternity/A+E
- nb doesn’t include stats from primary or social care
health economics use this data, collected by the NHS, for economic evaluation
what is the ICER (incremental cost-effectiveness ratio?
how is it calculated?
ICER = difference in costs / difference in consequences
calculates the cost per extra unit of benefit