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Effectiveness, costs, and cost-effectiveness of recruitment strategies for a mammographic screening program to detect breast cancer.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Since effective and affordable recruitment methods are essential for the widespread implementation of mammographic screening for detection of breast cancer, we studied the effectiveness, the costs, and the cost-effectiveness of various recruitment strategies in the population targeted by a pilot Australian program that offered free mammography screening between 1988 and 1990. METHODS: We evaluated three public recruitment strategies--local newspaper articles, community promotion, and promotion to physicians--and five personal strategies--invitation letters with or without specified appointment times, either alone or with a follow-up letter, or telephone call to nonattenders. The effectiveness of public recruitment strategies was estimated from monthly attendance rates by Poisson regression analysis, while the probability of attendance in response to personal strategies was calculated using logistic regression analysis. Costs were determined by resource usage studies. The cost-effectiveness ratios for personal strategies were determined using decision analysis. RESULTS: The costs in 1988-1989 Australian dollars per woman recruited were $22 for local newspaper articles and $106 for community promotion. No detectable increase in attendance resulted from promotion to physicians. When the cost of reserving an appointment was considered, the most cost-effective personal recruitment strategy was an invitation letter without a specified appointment time, followed by a second letter to nonattenders. This strategy recruited 35.6% of women in the sample targeted and cost $10.52 per attendee. In comparison, the most effective personal recruitment strategy was a letter with a specified appointment time followed by a second letter to nonattenders, which recruited 44.1% of women at an average cost of $19.99 and a marginal cost of $59.71 per additional attendee. CONCLUSIONS: Personal recruitment strategies were more cost-effective than public strategies. The most cost-effective personal strategy was an invitation letter without a specified appointment time, followed by a second letter to nonattenders.

Australia

Effectiveness and cost effectiveness of persuasive communications and incentives in increasing safety belt use.

The Safety Belt Connection Project was a worksite health promotion project conducted at a medical school and hospital complex to test the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of four treatment conditions (TCs): TC1, Persuasive Communications (PCs) alone; TC2, PCs plus overt monitoring; TC3, PCs plus incentives; and TC4, PCs plus incentives and prompts. Parking lots were randomized to treatment condition. A community traffic intersection served as a comparison group. Trained observers recorded safety belt use rates (SBURs) of subjects (front seat occupants) over a two-week period at baseline and after a four-week period of intervention. Results were analyzed by chi-square comparisons of pre-treatment and post-treatment SBURs. At baseline, significant differences in SBURs between treatment groups were observed. Significant pre-to-post differences were found for TC3 and TC4: the SBUR in TC3 went from 18.3% - 38.4% (p less than 0.001) and the SBUR in TC4 went from 16.9% - 44.8% (p less than 0.001). Both TC3 and TC4 were effective, but TC4 cost 2.6 times more per person influenced to wear their safety belt.

Communication

Will cost effectiveness analysis worsen the cost effectiveness of health care?

Cost effectiveness analysis is increasingly advocated as a basis for health policy. Analysts often compare expensive interventions with highly cost-effective programs such as hypertension screening, implying that if the former were curtailed resources would be reallocated to the latter and the efficiency of health care would improve. However, in practice, savings are unlikely to be targeted in this way. We present refined policy models that take into account actual patterns of resource allocation in the United States, and provide more realistic estimates of the likely uses of savings. We illustrate the implications of these models in an analysis of the effects of diverting funds from an expensive but effective practice. Eliminating such a practice would actually worsen the overall cost-effectiveness of U.S. health care unless there are radical changes in health policy. Cost effectiveness analysis incorrectly predicts health and cost outcomes of policy initiatives because it ignores the political constraints to health care decision-making.

Cost Control

Is patch testing cost-effective?

Costs for dermatitis can be evaluated against the costs and potential benefits of patch testing on the basis of data available from several sources. Consideration of cost for an individual patient suggests that costs become neutral and benefits become positive if the dermatitis is persistent and multiple physician visits are required. The appropriate use of patch testing should yield a positive test result 30% to 65% of the time.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

A utility-based model for comparing the cost-effectiveness of diagnostic studies.

The effective cost of a diagnostic test is the money spent per unit of diagnostic performance. The latter can be measured as diagnostic utility (DU), the probability-weighted sum of the utilities of the four test outcomes TP, TN, FP, and FN: DU = U(TP)P(TP) + U(TN)P(TN) + U(FP)P(FP) + U(FN)P(FN). DU (which also is called expected utility) incorporates the clinical decision analytic variables sensitivity (Se), specificity (Sp), equivocal fraction (EF), disease probability (P(D)), and outcome utility (U). DU is not an inherent property of a diagnostic test but of test-observer interactions in a clinical setting. The model sets the effective cost (EC) of a diagnostic test = actual direct cost (ADC)/DU. When DU = 1 (perfect test) EC = ADC and the patient benefits from the test dollar for dollar. When DU less than 1, EC exceeds ADC. If DU approaches O, EC becomes infinite; the test has no effectiveness at any cost. DU depends strongly on P(D) if Se and Sp differ significantly; then EC also depends on P(D), and the effective cost of a test performed in the wrong P(D) setting may be several times its actual direct cost. This model of comparing effective costs compares actual direct cost with clinical measures of test performance and utility values that allow expression of patient/doctor fears and preferences. It offers a more clinically realistic setting than models based on costs alone.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Cost-effectiveness study of cefotetan versus cefoxitin and cefotetan versus combination antibiotic regimens.

The clinical efficacy, adverse effects, cost of therapy, and administration time required to treat 141 patients were compared for cefotetan versus cefoxitin (Study A) and cefotetan versus combination antibiotic therapy (Study B). No major differences were observed in clinical efficacy or adverse effects in any of the treatment groups. Cefotetan was more cost-effective than cefoxitin, even though cefoxitin was given for shorter periods. Cefotetan was also more cost-effective than a combination of ampicillin, an aminoglycoside, and clindamycin. Although the ampicillin, aminoglycoside, and metronidazole combination appeared to be the most cost-effective regimen, this combination required the longest administration time (240 percent longer than cefotetan). Cefotetan appears to be comparably efficacious and more cost-effective than other currently used antianaerobic regimens in our institution.

Aminoglycosides

Variability among methods to assess patients' well-being and consequent effect on a cost-effectiveness analysis.

Cost-effectiveness analysis is emerging as an approach for determining the relative value of health care programs, technologic innovations, and clinical decisions. Increasingly, patients' stated values for quality of life are applied as adjustment in these analyses; the results may vary depending on how individuals assess their well-being. We interviewed 58 patients with chronic renal failure to determine the level of agreement among six methods for assessing well-being, and to determine the effects of variation in assessed well-being on the results of a cost-effectiveness analysis of in-center hemodialysis. Patients reported well-being using the Sickness Impact Profile, Campbell Index of Well-being, Kaplan-Bush Index of Well-being, categorical scaling, standard gamble, and time trade-off. We found that patient well-being was substantially higher as evaluated by the Sickness Impact Profile compared to the other five methods. The Sickness Impact Profile and the Kaplan-Bush Index of Well-being provided much narrower distributions of assessed values relative to other measures. Correlations among assessment methods were poor (Spearman rank-correlation coefficients range: 0.094-0.519). Discrepancies among indices were particularly vivid when we evaluated data at the individual level; many patients reported a high level of well-being according to one index and a low level of well-being according to a different index. The cost effectiveness of in-center hemodialysis varied from $34,893 to $45,254 per quality-adjusted life-year saved according to the Sickness Impact Profile and standard-gamble technique respectively. The substantial variability in patients' stated quality of life may preclude the use of a single method to analyze the cost effectiveness of a health program.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses in the medical literature. Are the methods being used correctly?

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether published cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses have adhered to basic analytic principles. DESIGN: Structured methodologic review of published articles. STUDY SAMPLE: Seventy-seven articles published either from 1978 to 1980 or from 1985 to 1987 in general medical, general surgical, and medical subspecialty journals. MAIN OUTCOME MEASUREMENTS: Articles were reviewed to assess the use and reporting of six fundamental principles of analysis. These principles were derived by reviewing widely cited textbooks and articles describing the methods for performing economic analyses and by selecting the methods universally recommended. MAIN RESULTS: Overall performance was only fair. Three articles adhered to all six principles, and the median number of principles to which articles adhered was three. Among the problems noted were failure to make underlying assumptions explicit and, therefore, verifiable, and failure to test assumptions with sensitivity analyses. No improvement in performance was observed between 1978 and 1987. Articles in general medical journals, however, were more likely to use analytic methods appropriately than articles in the general surgical or medical subspecialty literature. CONCLUSIONS: Greater attention should be devoted to ensuring the appropriate use of analytic methods for economic analyses, and readers should make note of the methods used when interpreting the results of economic analyses.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

On the (near) equivalence of cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses.

Many people believe that cost-effectiveness (CE) and cost-benefit (CB) analyses require different assumptions. However, when CE analysis supports decisions to use medical resources, it makes the same assumptions that CB analysis requires. They are mathematically equivalent. Differences between CE and CB hinge more on reporting style than on fundamental assumptions.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Strategies for diagnosis and treatment of children at risk for occult bacteremia: clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.

Decision analysis was used to evaluate the probable health benefits, complications, and costs of six management strategies for febrile children at risk for occult bacteremia. The strategy that combined blood culture with empiric oral antibiotic treatment for all patients was predicted to prevent the highest number of major infections and to have the lowest cost per major infection prevented. The strategy that combined a leukocyte count and blood culture for all patients, followed by empiric antibiotic treatment for those with leukocyte count greater than or equal to 10,000/mm3, had almost equal cost and clinical effectiveness and avoided many antibiotic complications. Culture of blood specimens from all patients and no empiric treatment constituted the third most clinically effective intervention but was the least cost-effective in this model. Giving a 2-day oral course of amoxicillin without testing had the lowest average cost per febrile patient but was the least clinically effective intervention. However, the low degree of effectiveness of empiric treatment alone was based on the assumption that oral amoxicillin therapy was only 20% effective in preventing major infections after bacteremia. At higher estimates of effectiveness, treatment alone became a more viable strategy. We conclude that approaches which combine blood culture with empiric antibiotic treatment are the most clinically effective and the most cost-effective strategies for children at risk for occult bacteremia.

Amoxicillin

The benefits, costs and risks of topical tar preparations in the treatment of psoriasis: considerations of cost effectiveness.

Cost-effectiveness analysis provides an analytical framework for comparing the costs, benefits, and risks of treatment. Using these techniques we evaluated topical tar in the treatment of psoriasis. Topical tar has, at most, a small benefit in accelerating the clearing of psoriasis. There is no systematic evidence to suggest that using topical tar during clearing extends the length of a remission. This analysis suggests that using topical tar may increase costs of therapy three-to thirteen-fold without substantial clinical benefits. Adequate data to support tar as a cost-effective agent in the treatment of psoriasis is lacking.

Administration, Topical

Cost-effective caring.

Cost containment is the key issue in healthcare systems and a key concept that nurses must grasp in this time of shrinking budgets and growing demand for health care. As healthcare budgets come under increasing scrutiny, nurses must prove their cost-effectiveness. To ensure the maintenance of quality care, national nurses' associations have a strong role to play in supporting research efforts into nursing's real worth (not only in cost terms) and gathering and disseminating this information to demonstrate the value of quality nursing. To get nurses worldwide to campaign for cost-effectiveness, ICN will focus on "Quality, Costs and Nursing" in its celebration of International Nurses' Day in 1993.

Cost Control