- Title
- Critique of an economic evaluation using the Drummond checklist (editorial)
- Creator
- Doran, Christopher M.
- Relation
- Applied Health Economics and Health Policy Vol. 8, Issue 6, p. 357 - 359
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.2165/11584400-000000000-00000
- Publisher
- Adis International
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2010
- Description
- In this issue of Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, Sladkevicius et al. report the results of an economic evaluation of establishing a neonatal screening programme for phenylketonuria (PKU) in Libya. The authors undertook a cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) and a return on investment analysis. Against a background of limited resources and rational decision making, economic evaluations have been used more frequently over the past 2 decades as pressures to control healthcare spending have increased. The central purpose of an economic evaluation is to compare the relative value of different interventions in creating better health, longer life or a return on investment. The results of such evaluations are typically summarized as a ratio, where the denominator reflects the gain in health from an intervention (measured as units natural to the programme at hand, such as life-years gained, for a CEA or converted to monetary terms for a cost benefit analysis [CBA]), and the numerator reflects the cost of obtaining that health gain. A variant of CEA, cost-utility analysis (CUA) measures the gain according to health-state preference scores or utility weights, thus providing an opportunity to measure the quality of life-years gained (or disability-adjusted life-years averted), not just the crude number of years. Given the rise in popularity of the use of economic evaluations, guidelines have been developed to improve the methodological rigour, and hence comparability, of each evaluation. Two of the more commonly cited references are the Washington Consensus Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine and a textbook by Drummond et al. Both provide recommendations for the conduct of economic evaluations in order to improve their quality. Drummond et al. developed a checklist for assessing economic evaluations, which provides useful guidance for those undertaking their own study. It is in the general context of these guidelines that the contribution by Sladkevicius et al. is critiqued.
- Subject
- neonatal screening programmes; Drummond checklist; cost-effectiveness analysis; Libya; phenylketonuria; economic evaluation
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/927852
- Identifier
- uon:10269
- Identifier
- ISSN:1175-5652
- Language
- eng
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