public health MS lecture Flashcards
(12 cards)
what is the term where treatment is given elsewhere and benefit foregone other patients
opportunity cost
what does opportunity cost mean?
the sacrifice in terms of the benefits foregone from not allocating the resources to the next best activity
healthcare Economic Efficiency - what is it?
economic efficiency is achieved when resources are allocated between activities in such a way as to maximise benefit
what is equity in terms of economic evaluation?
concerned with the fairness / justice of the distribution of costs and benefits
what is the equity efficiency trade off?
Improving equity often leads to a loss in efficiency
if you fund the expensive drug treatments for eg. rare cancer patients, then this is equitable,
but leads to an efficiency trade off because health is overall lost as the funding is not available to treat people with common diseases where the benefits would be much greater for the same cost..
on balance there is a loss of health
this is equitable
but not efficienct
what is economic evaluation?
the assesssment of efficiency..
a comparative study of the costs and benefits of healthcare interventions
costs and benefits are analysed in terms of their increments (differences…)
‘are the incremental beenfits of a new treatment worth the incremental costs?’
how can we measure health benefits?
natural units
the QALY (Combines length of life with quality of life)
Monetary value
two parts of a QALY?
length of life
quality of life
what are the 4 types of an economic evaluation?
and what do they involve….
cost effectiveness analysis (outcomes are measured in natural units - for example cost per life year gained…)
effectiveness - brutal and simple
cost utility analysis (outcomes are measured in quality adjusted life years (incremental cost per QALY gained)
utility - ‘benefit’ - more calculation
cost benefit analysis (outcomes measured in monetary units eg. net benefit 10£)
cost minimisation analysis - if the outcomes are the same in both treatments - just minimises cost (eg. types of Mirena coil etc..)
COST…..ANALYSIS:
effectiveness - years / other natural units..
utility - QALYs
benefit - monetary units
minimisation - outcomes same in both Tx, just minimises cost..
what is the concept of incremental analysis?
what does the incremental cost effectiveness ratio do?
everything is relative
must always be a comparison
compares 2 treatments, and gives the result in terms of cost per x gained (x might be a QALY / an extra case detected etc.)
drawbacks of cost effectiveness analysis?
what is better to use?
because is in ‘natural units’ makes it difficult to compare across disease areas (eg. heart transplants compared to pregancies prevented…)
cost utility analysis
drawback of cost benefit analysis?
need to put a monetary value on all health outcomes, which is difficult
