Understanding and anticipating lag-time bias in cost-effectiveness studies: the role of time in cost-effectiveness analysis
Publication year
2014Source
International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, 30, 6, (2014), pp. 608-611ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor

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Organization
Health Evidence
Geriatrics
Journal title
International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care
Volume
vol. 30
Issue
iss. 6
Page start
p. 608
Page end
p. 611
Subject
Radboudumc 13: Stress-related disorders DCMN: Donders Center for Medical Neuroscience; Radboudumc 18: Healthcare improvement science RIHS: Radboud Institute for Health Sciences; Radboudumc 1: Alzheimer`s disease DCMN: Donders Center for Medical NeuroscienceAbstract
BACKGROUND: Timely provision of information on the cost-effectiveness of innovations in health care becomes more and more important, resulting in increasing pressure on researchers to provide proof of cost-effectiveness in a short time frame. However, most of these innovations require considerable time and effort to optimally implement leading to a biased "steady state" cost-effectiveness outcome. As decision makers in health care predominantly have a short-term focus, the discrepancy between short-term study outcomes and long-term cost-effectiveness may very well lead to misguided decisions about the adoption of innovations in health care. METHODS: Factors such as learning effects, capacity constraints, and delayed time to benefit are all related to a short-run timeframe and result in inefficiencies during the implementation of an innovation. These factors and the mechanisms by which they influence the cost-effectiveness outcome are explained for three different types of healthcare innovations. RESULTS: As standard cost-effectiveness analysis assumes costs and effects to behave constant and representative for an innovation's entire economic lifetime, resulting cost-effectiveness outcomes might give a biased, and often overly pessimistic, reflection of the actual cost-effectiveness of an innovation. This is further amplified by the fact that short-run inefficiencies are most prevalent and impactful during an innovation's earliest stage of operation. CONCLUSIONS: This study advocates to carefully take into account the different factors contributing to lag-time bias in the design and analysis of cost-effectiveness studies, and to communicate potential biases due to short-run inefficiencies to all stakeholders involved in the decision making process.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [204996]
- Faculty of Medical Sciences [81051]
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