Generic outcomes used in economic evaluations are less suitable for assessing the quality of life of patients with specific conditions. Disease-specific patient-reported outcome measures offer a promising alternative.
ObjectiveEconomic evaluations predominantly use generic outcomes, such as the Euro Quality of Life-5 Dimension (EQ-5D), to assess health status. However, because of the generic nature, they are less suitable to capture the quality of life of patients with specific conditions. Given the transition to patient-centered (remote) care delivery, this study aims to evaluate the possibility of using disease-specific measures in a cost-effectiveness analysis.MethodsA real-life cohort from Maasstad Hospital (2020-2021) in the Netherlands, with 772 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), was used to assess the cost-effectiveness of electronic consultations (e-consultations) compared with face-to-face consultations. The Incremental Cost-Effectiveness Ratio (ICER), based on the generic EQ-5D, was compared with ICER's based on RA-specific measures: the Rheumatoid Arthritis Impact of Disease (RAID) and Health Assessment Questionnaire-Disability Index (HAQ-DI). To compare the cost-effectiveness of these different measures, HAQ-DI and RAID were expressed in quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) via estimated conversion equations.ResultsDisease-specific patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) offer a promising alternative for traditional measures in economic evaluations, capturing patient-relevant domains more comprehensively. Because PROMs are increasingly applied in clinical practice, the next step entails modeling of an RA patient-wide conversion equation to implement PROMs in economic evaluations.ConclusionThe conventional ICER (eg, EQ-5D) indicates that e-consultations are cost-effective with cost savings of -euro161,000 per QALY gained for a prevalent RA cohort treated in a secondary trainee hospital. RA-specific measures show similar results, with ICERs of -euro163,000 per HAQ-DI (QALY) and -euro223,000 per RAID (QALY) gained. RA-specific measures capture patient-relevant domains and offer the opportunity to improve the assessment and treatment of the disease impact.
作者
我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。
推荐
暂无数据