Critically examine a case study of economic evaluation of a specific initiative in the health care system

 

Critically examine a case study of economic evaluation of a specific initiative in the health care system.

You will critically examine a case study of economic evaluation of a specific initiative in the health care system.

I will upload some readings to help you out in Assessment . This list is not an exhaustive list. Please conduct your own research as well. also, I will upload a good example of Cost Effectiveness Analysis of a public health program (quite similar to the one in the Assessment), and a sample question and answer from an alternative Assessment question on Economic Evaluation. This will give you indication as to HOW/WHERE to look for information. The task is to do a Cost-effectiveness analysis (using gathered data) on TWO ‘intervention programmes’: 1. BMI screening only 2. Both BMI screening and ED screening clarification on the task required in Assessment . You need to consider health outcomes (e.g., reduced hypertension) from potential health interventions (e.g., behavioural therapy) that may result from increased awareness of parents due to their children’s (i) BMI screening and (ii) BMI and ED screening (assume obesity and ED issues are unrelated for simplicity). So the link is: (i) BMI screening LEADING to adoption of ‘health program’ LEADING to reduced hypertension. Reduced hypertension is the effectiveness measure here. You could have any other measure of effectiveness, e.g., incidence of cardio-vascular disease, incidence of metabolic disease, QALY, etc. Do your research to adopt one or two measures of ‘effectiveness’ that suits you best. Similarly for ED screening. The effectiveness measure may be same as above, or may be different. If different, ‘add’ it to the effectiveness for BMI. In this respect QALY works best, as it is perfectly additive. If the effectiveness of BMI screening and ED screening cannot be added, you have to make two separate ICERS – one for each. That’s fine too. To draw the link between ‘screenings’ to ‘adoption of health program’, you need to make assumptions about the fraction of people taking up a ‘health program’ when they get to know about the health risks of being obese and/or having ED. This is ideally based on evidence, but if you haven’t got time – it is fine to just state your assumption. You can even argue that the school implements a compulsory health program for all kids who were found obese/having ED. So you assumption would be 100% uptake into the health program. Also, not everybody enrolled in a health program will have reduced illness or improved life. You are to find this information, which depends on how you are measuring effectiveness. Of course, the interventions will have costs. Cost items will differ depending on the intervening health program and the perspective, and need to be evidenced as well. Direct costs are costs of implementing the screenings at school, the indirect costs are costs of the ‘health programs’ and costs of health expenditure due to hypertension (or any other co-morbidities you may have chosen to focus on). These costs are compared against a baseline of ‘no screening’ – where you just need to consider healthcare costs associated with hypertension in the general population. By compare, I mean the difference in the numerator of the ICER expression.