Economic Analysis
Article investigates a model to more accurately predict the impact of a disease management program on costs and cost-effectiveness. (Source: Health Economics, June 2010)
This article deals with the question of how to handle costs to enhance medication adherence in trial-based pharmacoeconomic analyses. (Source: Pharmacoeconomics 2011)
White paper by Luce and O'Hagan from “The Bayesian Initiative”, formed to explore the extent to which formal Bayesian statistical analysis can and should be incorporated into the field of HEOR for the purpose of assisting rational health care decision-making.
Advisory Panel report from ISPOR Working Group
The Atlas is published alongside the NHS Outcomes Framework to act as a catalyst for driving improvements in quality, outcome and value measurement throughout the NHS by encouraging a change in culture and behavior, including a renewed focus on tackling inequalities in outcomes.
Pharmacoeconomics, Nov. 2009
Advisory Panel Report from ISPOR
Six Blue Cross plans have joined to collaborate on providing online access to a health care cost information tool called "Care Comparison". Organizers of the effort say the easy-to-access, online tool, will serve more than 48 million consumers who will have access to cost information. (Source: Managed Care Information Center, Nov. 17, 2009)
Gain instant access to detailed benchmarks and best practices that will streamline your health economics efforts. This one-of-a-kind study showcases the most up-to-date information on health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) goals and management.
Presentation at ISPOR Europe, Nov. 2011, by Rob Thwaites, MA, Vice President, United BioSource Corporation, London, UK
Although geographic differences in Medicare spending are widely considered to be evidence of program inefficiency, policymakers need to understand how differences in beneficiaries' health and personal characteristics and specific geographic factors affect the amount of Medicare spending per beneficiary before formulating policies to reduce geographic differences in spending. (Source: NEJM, July 2010)
In this YouTube video, the Editor of PharmacoEconomics discusses a common error authors make when reporting the results of economic evaluations(Source: Youtube)
Advisory Panel Report from ISPOR
NPC asked the panelists for their insights on the challenges of developing and using evidence
According to The Zitter Group’s Managed Care Benefit Design Index: Emerging Trends in Access, cost concerns for both payers and employers continue to dominate insurance benefit design. Zitter Group research shows that increased prior authorizations and higher cost-sharing is a trend in the industry. Cost-sharing increased for PY2012 and employers seem to have increased formulary restrictions to a level in line with ASO recommendations. (Source: Managed Healthcare Executive)
Provides public electronic access to a comprehensive database of cost-effectiveness ratios in the published literature. Its goals are to find opportunities for targeting resources to save lives and improve health and to move towards standardization of cost-effectiveness methodology in the field. Housed at Tufts Medical Center, Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies.
Information on the threshold values used in CHOICE analyses for the relative CE of an intervention in current international dollars of 2000 for 14 countries. Following the recommendations of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, CHOICE uses gross domestic product (GDP) as a readily available indicator to derive the following three categories of cost-effectiveness: Highly cost-effective (less than GDP per capita); Cost-effective (between one and three times GDP per capita); and Not cost-effective (more than three times GDP per capita)
This paper by H. Dakin and S. Wordsworth aims to establish whether it is ever appropriate to conduct cost-minimisation analysis (CMA) rather than cost-effectiveness analysis. They perform a literature review to examine how the use of CMA has changed since Briggs & O'Brien announced its death in 2001.
While COI studies attract much interest from public health advocates and healthcare policy makers, inconsistencies in the way in which they are conducted and a lack of transparency in reporting have made interpretation difficult, and have ostensibly limited their usefulness. (Source: AdisOnline.com, Larg, Allison; Moss, John R.)
Presentation at ISPOR Europe, Nov. 2011, by Lieven Annemans, PhD, MMan, MSc, Professor of Health Economics, I-CHER, Ghent University and Brussels University, Ghent, Belgium
Health economics is a sub-discipline of economics and studies the allocation of scarce resources among alternative healthcare programs or strategies for the promotion, maintenance and improvement of health. Health economics studies how healthcare and health-related services, their costs and benefits, and health itself are distributed among individuals and groups in society. Health economics is concerned with the formal analysis of direct and indirect costs and benefits that are a consequence of a health care intervention, program or strategy. The science of health economics has significantly progressed in recent years. Although a lot of disagreement among health economists existed in the early nineties, over the recent years more consensus on methodology has been reached. This development resulted in a standardised approach, allowing valid comparisons of studies in different fields of health care and across countries. The main study types used in economic evaluation are cost-effectiveness (CEA) and cost-utility analysis (CUA) in which the incremental net costs of a programme are related to the health benefits.
Summary of presentation by Dr. Daniel Kahneman at 2005 ISPOR meeting. Covers the value of QALY
This includes HTA, CEA, and discussion of barriers for Asia as a whole, Thailand, Taiwan, Uganda, Latin America and Caribbean, and low- and middle-income countries. (Source: Pharmaeconomics, Nov. 1. 2009)
In a thoughtful commentary published in the British Medical Journal, clinical researchers from Europe question the claims of cost-effectiveness made for many commonly used pharmacological treatments. (Source:RX Outcomes Adviser)
A recent report by Acumen, LLC, finds that consolidating Part B and Part D drug benefits would reduce Medicare's total payments by $150 million, which is 0.4% percent of total Part D drug costs.
Performs customized calculations of the value of new drugs, medical devices and other therapeutic interventions. The Model links cost and utilization data from large patient care databases to published clinical data specific to new drugs, classes of drugs, diagnostics, medical technologies, or a combination of drugs and technologies used to treat a specific disease.
External referencing (ER) imposes a price cap for pharmaceuticals, based on prices of identical or comparable products in foreign countries. This article describes a model that inspired by the wide European experience with this cost-containment policy.
Financial Modeler from Thomson Reuters helps you easily and confidently forecast future expenditures, establish a budget, and track against that budget throughout the year. It also supports the annual premium and contribution rate-setting process
Improved forecast quality through ’deep strategy’ brought on by dynamic scenario planning, the best way to understand and control corporate risks
This paper,published in the March 2012 Journal of Health Economics, takes a bibliometric tour of the last forty years of health economics using bibliographic “metadata” from EconLit supplemented by citation data from Google Scholar and our own topical classifications
Article by Hughes DA in Br J Clin Pharmacol Sep 2010
The Program in Cost-Effectiveness and Outcomes provides up-to-date data for researchers and provides a forum for students and researchers wishing to share ideas and solve problems specific to cost-effectiveness analysis. A generic life table is available for converting risk ratios to changes in life expectancy.
Consensus documents on key outcomes research methods. ISPOR convenes experts in outcomes research to develop guidance for researchers on contentious outcomes research methods.
The government has unveiled its plans for a new outcomes framework to underpin the revamped National Health Service and establish accountability at a national level “in an open and transparent way”. The NHS Outcomes Framework will consist of a set of national outcome goals to help give an indication of the overall performance of the Service, as well as provide a mechanism by which the Health Secretary can hold the new independent NHS Commissioning Board to account for securing improved health outcomes. (Source: Pharma Times July 20, 2010)
Pharmacoeconomics and health outcomes research are playing an increasingly important role in informing clinical development and market access decisions of new innovative medicines. Both disciplines are dealing with the evaluation of the costs and outcomes of healthcare interventions and can be considered as two branches of the same “value for money” tree. (Source: Frontiers Reviews, Dominique J. Dubose)
Growing Application of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research in Health-Care Decision-Making in the Asia-Pacific Region. (Source: Bong-min Yang, PhD, and Kenneth Lee, PhD, Values in Health, Vol. 12, 2009)
In the United States, we collect better quality information and provide more advanced analytics on baseball players than we do on our personal health. Every time a batter steps up to the plate or a kicker lines up for a field-goal attempt, the announcers have access to every possible statistic needed to tell us, in an instant, the chances that player will hit a home run or split the uprights.
Developed from the rich insights of experienced managers and in-the-field liaisons, this study’s data — including team structures and staffing levels, core HOL activities, compensation benchmarks and profiles of groups in the US, EU and emerging markets — will help you optimize your HOL team.
Authors advocate $US 50,000 per QALY benchmark for determining value for money should be updated, and must vary across payers, populations and even procedures. (Source: PharmacoEconomics: 1 March 2010 - Volume 28 - Issue 3 - pp 175-184)
The author relates CER to CBA, and discusses why CER research design is easier to translate into CBA than randomized controlled trials.
This is a paper in progress that blends health related quality of life with health economic theory. Very intriguing.
Self study education course from National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR). This module describes the definition and purpose of economic evaluation studies; outlines and highlights the characteristics of the health economic evaluation literature; outlines an effective approach to identifying and retrieving economic evaluation studies from bibliographic databases; considers how economic evaluation studies are indexed in the two major bibliographic databases, MEDLINE and EMBASE
Presentation at ISPOR Europe, Nov. 2011, by Phil McEwan, PhD, Managing Director, HEOR Consulting, Monmouth, Monmouthshire, UK
Presentation at ISPOR Europe, Nov. 2011, by James S. Anderson, MA, MBA, European Partnerships Director, Government Affairs, Public Policy and Patient Advocacy, GlaxoSmithKline, Brentford, UK
Ulf Staginnus, is the creator of HealthEconomics Blog and Head Pricing, Health Economics & Outcome Research, Europe, at Novartis Oncology. He talks about the direct implications of recent European cost-containment measures on the pharmaceutical industry. Watch, and learn why the tough times are here to stay. what industry executives and policy makers alike, must do to reach an innovative and cost-effective agreement.
This issue of PharmacoEconomics is devoted entirely to issues related to comparative effectiveness research ( Source: Pharmacoeconomics, Authors: Howard G. Birnbaum and Paul E. Greenberg).
Commentary in JMCP March 2010 issue discussing most of the recent evidence from controlled studies suggests that chronic disease management is not delivering on the promise of lowered costs through improved population health.
This is a pay per view article by Jonathan R. Harper from the Journal PharmacoEconomics.
Babar & Scahill have argued against using pharmacoeconomic in developing countries because of the supposedly weak health system in the countries and complexities of the tool. They have promoted the use of drug pricing policy instead. In our letter we argued about the vague intention of their model, and bias of the model factor selection. (Source:Babar ZUD, Scahill S. PharacoEconomics.2010; Published ahead of print)
Presentation at ISPOR Europe, Nov. 2011, by Robert J. LoCasale, PhD, MS, Senior Epidemiologist, Epidemiology, Merck, North Wales, PA, USA
Advisory Panel Report from ISPOR, with the goal to identify key contentious methodology issues in conducting health care pharmacoeconomic evaluations clinical studies
Intends to improve the transparency, consistency, and scientific rigor of this work, which consists of systematic reviews of existing research on effectiveness, comparative effectiveness, and comparative harm of different health care interventions. (Source: AHRQ)
Summary of a workshop to define pharmacoeconomic concepts and terminology. (Source: JEADV(2005)19(Suppl. 1), 34–39
Book chapter describing marginal costs, benefits, cost effectiveness analysis, and methodological issues
This paper summarizes the results of an interdisciplinary conference to identify the issues in conducting pharmacoeconomic studies, interpreting the results of these studies, and using pharmacoeconomic information in health care decisions. (Source: Advisory Board & Marilyn Dix Smith PhD, ISPOR, 1998)
Publication from ISPOR covering issues to consider in CEA/QOL within clinical trials, modeling, patient reported outcomes, claims analysis, etc. Good educational tool
A PPT presentation examining South America's contribution. (Source: docstoc.com, Machado,M.et.al.)
This link includes a great table from Mike Drummond entitled "Detecting Flaws in Economic Evaluation". Excellent student resource
This paper, recently published in Medicare Care, evaluates what factors Medicare considers when making national coverage determinations for medical technology. Medicare’s stated position is that cost-effectiveness evidence is not relevant to their decisions. This research found that, while controlling for other factors, the availability of cost-effectiveness evidence was a statistically significant predictor of the coverage decision.
This Powerpoint presentation which can be down loaded gives a brief overview of the concepts of Budget Impact Analysis (BIA).
Four major content areas for which abstracts were solicited from scientists across the United States included: (1) study design, (2) data collection, (3) statistics and analytic methods, and (4) policy issues and applications. The symposium proceedings are published in a supplement to the June 2010 issue of the journal Medical Care. A printed copy of the supplement is available free of charge through the AHRQ Publications Clearinghouse.
Presentation at ISPOR Europe, Nov. 2011, by Mark Nuijten PhD, MD, MBA, Consultant, Health Economics, Ars Accessus Medica, Amsterdam (Jisp), The Netherlands
Presentation at ISPOR Europe, Nov. 2011, by Gerry Oster, PhD, Vice President, Policy Analysis Inc. (PAI), Brookline, MA, USA
Management report that assesses the impact that pharmacoeconomics has had on the pharmaceutical industry and shows how companies can utilize pharmacoeconomic modeling to gain a competitive edge. This report examines the most commonly used pharmacoeconomic methodologies with respect to both study perspective and the range of R&D costs that can be analyzed.
Discusses Pharmaceuticals Pricing Board, decision-making in the PPB, and health economic evaluations in decision-aking
This blog post discusses how health care decisions are made given consideration for testing results (especially false negatives) by insurance companies and government policy. (Source: Meep, POWIP, Nov 22, 2009)
Presentation at ISPOR Europe, Nov. 2011 by Louise Longworth, PhD, Reader in Health Economics, Health Economics Research Group, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK
Presentation at ISPOR Europe, Nov. 2011, by Ken O'Day, PhD, Director, Xcenda, LLC, Palm Harbor, FL, USA; Denise Globe, PhD, Senior Director, Global Health Outcomes Strategy and Research, Allergan, LLC, Irvine, CA, USA
Presentation at ISPOR Europe, Nov. 2011, by Mark Sculpher, PhD, Professor of Health Economics, University of York, UK
Presentation at ISPOR Europe, Nov. 2011, by Peter J. Neumann, ScD, Professor & Director, Center for Evaluation of Value & Risk in Health, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, USA
AJMC article "Voice Response System to Measure Healthcare Costs: A STAR*D Report" by Kashner, et al.
Presentation at ISPOR Europe, Nov. 2011, by Michael Drummond, MCom, DPhil, Professor of Health Economics, Centre for Health Economics, University of York, Heslington, York, UK
