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Dr. Shih is Associate Professor, Section of Health Services Research, Department of Biostatistics, Division of Quantitative Sciences, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX.
Dr. Halpern is Strategic Director, Health Services Research, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, GA.
Disclosure: No outside financial support was provided for this manuscript, and no conflict of interest exists.
Published online through CA First Look at http://CAonline.AmCancer.Soc.org.
To earn free CME credit for successfully completing the online quiz based on this article, go to http://CME.AmCancerSoc.org.
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ABSTRACT |
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 TOP ABSTRACT INTRODUCTIONBASIC COMPONENTS OF HEALTH...TYPES OF ECONOMIC EVALUTIONLIMITATIONS AND CHALLENGES IN...CONCLUSION--WHY SHOULD...SUMMARYREFERENCES |
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INTRODUCTION |
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TOPABSTRACTINTRODUCTIONBASIC COMPONENTS OF HEALTH...TYPES OF ECONOMIC EVALUTIONLIMITATIONS AND CHALLENGES IN...CONCLUSION--WHY SHOULD...SUMMARYREFERENCES |
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Economic evaluation encompasses a collection of methods that assess the costs and consequences of comparative health care interventions.10 Evaluating the health and economic impacts of these interventions has been a topic of long-standing interest among clinicians,11 and such evaluation involves a variety of issues, methods, and policy implications. For this review, we will discuss the main types of economic evaluation used to assess health care interventions in oncology, using published studies as examples to demonstrate how economic evaluation has been used for cancer care strategies. We will also discuss challenges in the practical application of economic evaluation and related policy implications. This review is designed for clinicians caring for individuals with cancer to assist with understanding and evaluating published economic analyses, as well as with identifying the key costs and benefits associated with their own clinical practices.
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BASIC COMPONENTS OF HEALTH ECONOMIC EVALUATIONS |
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TOPABSTRACTINTRODUCTIONBASIC COMPONENTS OF HEALTH...TYPES OF ECONOMIC EVALUTIONLIMITATIONS AND CHALLENGES IN...CONCLUSION--WHY SHOULD...SUMMARYREFERENCES |
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Economic evaluation is almost always structured to compare one intervention with a competing alternative or alternatives. In most cases, the "standard of care" is chosen as the comparator for new interventions; for conditions that lack effective treatments, "do nothing" may represent the standard of care. Naturally, advances in technology lead to changes in the standard of care. Examples can be found in studies comparing the cost-effectiveness of chemotherapy agents. For example, earlier economic evaluation studies comparing the cost-effectiveness of treatment options for non-small–cell lung cancer (NSCLC) often chose best supportive care as the standard of care,16,17 whereas more recent studies have often used cisplatin-based regimens as the standard of care for NSCLC.18,19
Costs
Costs can be broadly categorized into direct and indirect costs. Direct costs quantify resources consumed (medical and nonmedical) that are directly related to the medical interventions, whereas indirect costs (also known as productivity loss) quantify the time consumed or saved by patients and their caregivers as a result of the interventions. Indirect costs are sometimes extended to measure the long-term labor market consequences of illnesses or interventions; under these circumstances, indirect costs are further divided into morbidity costs (ie, productivity loss due to the illness) and mortality costs (ie, productivity loss due to premature death). The type of costs to be included in the analysis depends on the study perspective and purpose. Studies taking a societal perspective require the inclusion of both direct and indirect costs to capture the full economic impact of new interventions, whereas studies taking payers' (eg, health plans) perspectives often exclude indirect costs, as payers' primary concern is the financial burden to their health insurance plans. Employers may be more interested in indirect costs (absenteeism and lost productivity) than direct costs, as financial burden associated with indirect costs can be substantially larger than direct costs. Furthermore, whose costs will be counted may also differ by study perspective. For example, costs for patients and their caregivers are likely to be included in evaluations with a societal perspective, while a health plan might include caregiver costs only if the caregiver was also enrolled in the plan (as caregivers may have increased medical care utilization and costs compared with those not providing care to individuals with serious conditions). Readers have found the cost terminology confusing. The term "indirect costs" is particularly confusing because it is often mistaken as overhead costs (ie, costs of doing business that are not directly associated with providing a good or service, such as insurance, rent, and lighting). Some have suggested the use of different terms to distinguish between time costs related to the receipt of treatment and productivity loss associated with morbidity and mortality,15 while others choose to avoid using these terms completely.10 No agreement has been reached to date; therefore, it is recommended that researchers clearly state what each type of cost includes in their studies.
Time
There are 2 ways in which the effects of time are included in economic evaluation: discounting and inflation. For studies evaluating costs of a period longer than 1 year, such as those that follow patients from treatment initiation to death, future costs and outcomes must be "discounted." Discounting adjusts for differences in preferences (for health and money) over time; for example, most people would rather have $100 today than $100 next year because the $100 today could be used immediately or could be put in a bank, earn interest, and be worth more than $100 next year. Similarly, individuals tend to put increased value on being healthy now versus being healthy in the future. This may have important implications for preventive care; for example, individuals may value having cash now rather than paying for a cancer screening that would result in better health outcomes (from earlier-stage disease detection) in the future. It should be noted that in studies that measure costs and outcomes in different units, as in cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analyses (discussed subsequently), the general recommendation is to discount costs as well as outcomes.10 However, it is important to note that discounting both costs and outcomes may lead to less favorable cost-effectiveness measures for interventions with immediate costs but health benefits occurring years or decades in the future, such as vaccination, smoking cessation, and other forms of preventive care.
Time also factors into economic evaluation for inflation adjustment (that is, making sure that all costs included in an evaluation represent values from the same year). If an evaluation uses cost data from different years (eg, chemotherapy costs based on 2006 US dollars and hospital costs based on 2003 dollars), researchers will apply appropriate price indices (such as the Medical Care Component of Consumer Price Index) to "normalize" these cost values to the same year.
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TYPES OF ECONOMIC EVALUTION |
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Cost Analysis
Cost analysis only deals with the cost component of competing interventions, regardless of potential differences in the corresponding clinical outcomes; for example, is it cheaper to treat patients with Drug A or Drug B? As this does not include differences in outcomes (eg, survival rates) between Drugs A and B, it is considered a partial form of economic evaluation.10 Cost analysis is often conducted to explore the economic impact of a new intervention (compared with an existing intervention) or the economic burden associated with a specific disease or condition; cost-of-illness analysis is a form of the latter type of evaluation. Results of cost analyses can be presented either in terms of the "total" or "incremental" (additional) costs associated with interventions or diseases. The latter approach involves comparing costs between 2 scenarios, one with the intervention (or condition) and the other without.
The estimated total cost of cancer in the United States, as published annually by the National Institutes of Health, is an example of reporting total costs in cost analysis. The National Institutes of Health estimated that the total cost of cancer was $206.3 billion in 2006; of that, $78.2 billion was in direct medical costs, and $128.1 billion was in indirect costs, including $17.9 billion in morbidity costs and $110.2 billion in mortality costs.20 An example of a cost analysis that reports "incremental" costs can be found in the study by Shih et al in which the authors estimated the costs associated with uncontrolled chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) for cancer patients of working age whose chemotherapy regimens contained at least one highly or moderately emetogenic agent.21 The estimated average monthly medical cost for a patient with uncontrolled CINV was approximately $1,300 higher than that for a patient whose symptoms of CINV had been controlled. A subgroup analysis in that study concluded that indirect costs per patient per month were $433 higher for those in the uncontrolled CINV group.21 Another example is a cost evaluation of including palifermin for the treatment of oral mucositis among patients undergoing autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.9 Based on clinical trials data indicating that palifermin reduced the duration and frequency of oral mucositis in this patient population (compared with placebo), the authors concluded that palifermin prophylaxis was associated with a (nonsignificant) mean savings of $3,595 per patient.
Cost-minimization Analysis
Cost-minimization analysis (CMA) is a method of economic evaluation that chooses the least expensive alternative when the interventions under investigation have been shown to have equivalent clinical outcomes. In this type of analysis, because the clinical outcomes of all included interventions are equivalent, costs become the focus of evaluation. An example of CMA can be found in the study by Avritscher et al in which the authors compare the use of low-molecular–weight heparin and unfractionated heparin in the treatment of hospitalized cancer patients with deep venous thrombosis.22 The choice of CMA is justified in this study, as previous clinical study had shown low-molecular–weight heparin and unfractionated heparin to have equivalent efficacy and safety in the management of deep venous thrombosis.23,24 In another example,25 a Southwest Oncology Group trial comparing the use of vinorelbine plus cisplatin versus paclitaxel plus carboplatin in the treatment of advanced NSCLC found no statistically significant difference in survival or quality of life between the treatment arms. The authors, therefore, performed CMA and reported a substantially higher cost associated with paclitaxel and carboplatin combination therapy.
Cost-benefit Analysis
Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is an evaluation method that quantifies both costs and outcomes of competing health care interventions in monetary units. The net benefit can then be calculated by subtracting the costs of an intervention (in dollars) from the value of outcomes of the intervention (also in dollars).10 In this form of CBA, an intervention is worth implementing if the net benefit (outcomes minus costs) is positive; among interventions with positive net benefit, the one with the largest net benefit will be selected. An alternate approach to CBA is to divide the intervention outcomes (in dollars) by the intervention costs. This ratio, known as the benefit-cost ratio, measures dollars saved for every dollar spent on an intervention; interventions with the benefit-cost ratio greater than 1 are considered to be worth implementing. Halpern et al modeled the costs of workplace-based smoking cessation programs for a cohort of 10,000 employees.26 For a manufacturing facility in the southern United States, over 10 years the smoking cessation program would cost $1,193,322. However, combining medical care savings and workplace (indirect cost) savings, the program is projected to save $2,575,511 over 10 years. Thus, the program yields $2,575,511 divided by $1,193,322 or approximately $2.16 in savings for every dollar spent on cessation. With a benefit-cost ratio greater than 1, the authors recommended implementing the smoking cessation program.26 In performing comparisons, the interventions with the maximal benefit-cost ratios are, in many cases, the same interventions that result in the maximum net benefits. However, many researchers suggest caution in the use of benefit-cost ratios, as their values are sensitive to how (in economic terms) the benefits and costs are designated.10,27 For example, in evaluating a new chemotherapy, supportive care costs associated with chemotherapy-induced adverse events may be considered part of the overall treatment "cost" in a benefit-cost ratio since the supportive care is part of the treatment received. However, adverse events can also be thought of as negative outcomes and thus could be considered a negative part of the "benefit" in the benefit-cost ratio. In calculating the net economic impact of a supportive care intervention, it does not matter whether a positive cost or negative benefit is included; the net result is the same. However, in determining a benefit-cost ratio, results will differ depending on whether the intervention's costs are classified as positive costs or negative benefits.
By placing both costs and consequences in monetary units, CBA allows direct comparisons among interventions with different objectives and thus is attractive to policy makers who often need to choose among a wide array of interventions or treatment programs of varying natures (including both health care and nonhealth care programs). A somewhat controversial aspect of CBA is that it assigns explicit monetary values for each year of life, generally based on labor market values (ie, wages) for productivity (known as the human-capital approach). That is, the economic value of a year of life is based on the wages a person would earn during that year. Shibley et al used this approach to perform a CBA to estimate the economic value of cisplatin-based combination chemotherapy in the treatment of patients with advanced-stage testicular cancer. The CBA showed a net benefit of $150 million.28 Many researchers have challenged the use of wages to measure the value of human lives and have also raised concerns about the monetary values that are used to represent the productivity of persons not in the labor force, such as children, stay-at-home parents, or retirees.10
The willingness-to-pay (WTP) approach is an alternative method to define the economic value for an intervention or a year of life. In a WTP analysis, study participants are provided with information about a real or hypothetical intervention, including its potential to increase life expectancy. Participants are then asked to specify the maximum amount of money they would be willing to pay for the intervention. The net benefit associated with the new intervention is then calculated by subtracting its actual cost from its value as determined based on the WTP responses. Leighl et al conducted a WTP study to evaluate use of oral epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors for patients with advanced NSCLC in Canada. These investigators reported that both NSCLC patients and healthy subjects were willing to pay more for these agents but were willing to pay only a small proportion of their market price.29 Other examples of WTP evaluations in oncology include assessments of recombinant erythropoietin therapy for anemia among patients receiving chemotherapy.30,31
Cost-effectiveness Analysis
Unlike CBA, which uses monetary units to measure both costs and consequences, cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) expresses the consequences (ie, effectiveness, benefits, or outcomes) of the interventions in a nonmonetary, natural unit that is most appropriate to describe the desired objective of the interventions. These outcomes can include survival, progression-free survival, rate of complete response, or number of adverse events avoided during cancer therapy. CEA, therefore, compares interventions along 2 separate dimensions: costs and effectiveness. In cancer therapy, many new interventions are both more costly and more effective than older or "standard-of-care" interventions. For CEA, the difference in mean cost between the 2 interventions (new cost minus old cost) is divided by the difference in mean effectiveness (eg, new survival rate minus old survival rate) to get an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER). This ratio indicates the additional cost for obtaining one additional unit of outcome (eg, 1 month increase in survival or 1 additional year of life) for the new intervention compared with the old intervention. The ICER is often then compared with some selected threshold value to determine whether the new intervention is considered cost-effective. If the ICER is lower than the threshold value (ie, the incremental cost per outcome of the new intervention is less than the accepted standard), the intervention is considered cost-effective.10,12–15
However, in some cases new interventions are not more costly and more effective than old interventions. If a new intervention is less costly and more effective (the ideal case), then the new intervention is said to dominate its comparator(s)—that is, it produces better outcomes for less money. If, on the other hand, a new intervention is found to be more costly and yet less effective (the worst possible case), then the new intervention is dominated by its comparator(s)—it produces worse outcomes at a higher cost and, therefore, is not likely to be of interest. It is also possible for a new intervention to be both less effective and less costly than the standard of care (ie, produce less health benefit than the standard of care but at a lower cost). With net negative impacts on both costs and effectiveness, the new intervention in this case would produce a positive ICER compared with the standard of care (in the opposite manner that an intervention with greater costs and improved outcomes results in a positive ICER). There is disagreement as to whether a positive ICER produced by a better and more costly intervention is equivalent to a positive ICER from a less effective and less expensive intervention; some researchers have argued that a different (lower) threshold value should be applied to ICER derived from the latter scenario.32,33 However, the authors of this review feel that the term cost-effective should only be applied to interventions that have greater costs and greater effectiveness than the base-case intervention to avoid confusion regarding the meaning of "cost-effective."
It is important to note that some analyses have produced values called "cost-effectiveness ratios" by dividing the cost of a single intervention (without including a comparator) by its effectiveness. These are not ICER in that they do not explicitly compare one treatment option with another. In this case, by simply dividing an intervention's cost by its effectiveness, an assumption is made that in comparison no intervention (ie, doing nothing) has zero cost and zero effectiveness; in many cases, this clearly is not true. These ratios of cost divided by effectiveness for a single intervention therefore cannot be accurately interpreted and are not useful in economic evaluation.
An example of CEA applied to oncology is seen in a recently published study by Ng et al using data from a clinical trial of adjuvant vinorelbine plus cisplatin compared with observation after resection of stages IB-II NSCLC.34 Direct medical resource utilization data were collected from clinical trial and medical records of patients; effectiveness was measured in terms of survival (life years). Survival and costs (in 2005 Canadian dollars [$CAD]) were presented both with and without discounting at 5% per year. As expected, adjuvant chemotherapy resulted in greater costs; the mean costs of treatment per patient in the observation and adjuvant chemotherapy arms were $23,878 and $31,319, respectively. However, adjuvant therapy in the clinical trial was associated with an increase in mean survival of 12.5 months. The ICER of adjuvant chemotherapy to observation is therefore CAD$7,175 per life year gain using 5% discounted values and $10,096/life year gain undiscounted. The authors conclude that adjuvant therapy for this patient population is highly cost-effective.
Although CEA allows direct comparisons between interventions with the same outcome measure, this method has drawn criticism on 2 grounds. First, decision makers cannot use results from a CEA to compare various interventions if the effectiveness units (the outcome assessed in the evaluation) differ across studies. For example, some studies may summarize the CEA results in terms of costs per life year saved, while others may report costs per additional complete response achieved. Second, CEA comparisons of 2 interventions with the same effectiveness may not fully capture qualitative differences between the interventions. For example, 2 chemotherapy regimens may produce the same survival benefit, but patients will likely prefer the regimen with fewer side effects. However, such quality-of-life differences are not explicitly incorporated in a CEA using "life year saved" as the effectiveness measure.
Cost-utility Analysis
Cost-utility analysis (CUA) is an extension of CEA that uses an effectiveness measure known as the quality-adjusted life year (QALY) to address the limitations of CEA discussed previously. QALY is, as the name suggests, survival time (life years) weighted by the perceived quality of (or preference for) the level of health during that time. The weights used to calculate QALY, called utilities, range from 0 (immediate death) to 1.0 (perfect health). For example, assume that the median survival for a particular type of cancer among patients receiving treatment A is 2 years and is 2.5 years for those receiving treatment B. However, treatment B is associated with many more side effects and requires more frequent medical care interactions and hospitalizations, and patients receiving treatment B generally feel much sicker. The utility for patients receiving treatment A is 0.8, while for treatment B it is 0.6. QALY resulting from treatment A, on average, is 2 years times 0.8, which equals 1.6 QALY. For treatment B, QALY is 2.5 years times 0.6 or 1.5 QALY. Thus, treatment A provides better outcomes using QALY, despite involving shorter survival.
Utility weights used to calculate QALY can be collected from patients or from the general public. Although published guidelines for economic evaluations often recommend use of utilities collected from the general public (ie, a societal perspective), they also acknowledge that utilities collected from patients are appropriate.15 Utilities (health-state weights) can be collected using a number of choice-based methods that often require face-to-face patient contact.12–15,35,36 Due to practical considerations, researchers sometimes have patients complete specifically designed survey instruments, such as the EuroQol-5D questionnaire or the Health Utilities Index, and then apply published algorithms to convert data from these questionnaires to utilities.37–39
Similar to the CEA, in CUA the difference in costs between 2 interventions is divided by the difference in their QALY to produce a summary incremental cost-utility ratio, the additional costs required to achieve an additional QALY. A threshold value commonly cited in the literature of CUA is $50,000/QALY40,41; that is, interventions that have an incremental cost of no more than $50,000 per QALY gained are considered to be cost-effective. This threshold ($50,000/QALY) was based on the annual cost (approximately $50,000) for dialysis; as Medicare provides insurance coverage for patients with end-stage renal disease (regardless of age), this value may represent the societal willingness to pay per year (or more conservatively, per QALY).42 However, Ubel et al argued that the commonly cited cost-effectiveness thresholds, ranging from $50,000/QALY to $100,000/QALY, were based on 1982 dollars; thus, these threshold values may be too low for current cost-effectiveness studies.43 In fact, higher threshold values (as high as $300,000 per QALY) have been cited in some oncology studies.43–45
A related approach that has been used to justify the economic value of new interventions is to compare the ICER for a new intervention with the published values of ICER for other accepted interventions in similar disease areas or therapeutic classes.10 Lists of ICER are available for comparison in references called "league tables." This league-table approach is favored by some researchers because it allows comparison of health care interventions by their relative cost-effectiveness, in contrast to an arbitrarily determined threshold value. Advocates of the league-table approach argue that this allows researchers to place their findings of CEA/CUA in a broader context and may assist policy makers in allocating health care resources amongst interventions targeted at different diseases.46 However, Drummond et al cautioned against the use of the league table because ICER across studies may not be directly comparable due to variations in methodologies.47 The values of ICER in league tables are likely to be sensitive to factors such as discount rate, method to solicit preferences, definition of costs, and the choice of study comparator or study population, which can vary widely across studies.47,48
The oncology literature provides ample examples of CUA conducted in the last decade, and Earle and colleagues have provided a comprehensive overview of earlier CUA in oncology.40 We have included 2 recently published studies as examples of CUA.49,50 In the first study, Wolowacz and colleagues compared docetaxel, doxorubicin, and cyclophosphamide (TAC) with fluorouracil, doxorubicin, and cyclophosphamide (FAC) for patients with early node-positive breast cancer. In this study, utilities were collected from 2 sources: patients in a clinical trial that compared TAC and FAC as adjuvant therapy for women with node-positive early breast cancer in England and published literature. While TAC was associated with greater cost, it was also associated with improved QALY compared with FAC; the authors reported an ICER of £18,188 per QALY for TAC versus FAC and concluded that TAC is more cost-effective.49 A separate analysis by Kurian et al compared 3 treatment strategies for early-stage HER2/neu-positive breast cancer: no adjuvant trastuzumab, adjuvant trastuzumab therapy with anthracyclines (AAT), and adjuvant trastuzumab therapy without anthracyclines (NAT). AAT resulted in greater costs than no adjuvant trastuzumab but lower costs than NAT. Using previously published utility values, the authors reported a favorable ICER (less than $40,000 per QALY) for AAT compared with no adjuvant trastuzumab. The comparison between AAT and NAT indicated that AAT was the dominating strategy because it had lower costs and greater QALY than NAT.50
BIA
BIA has emerged more recently to address the issue of affordability, a critical and practical concern for health policy makers that may not always align with policy recommendations based on CEA or CUA.51 A growing number of payers, especially those under national health insurance systems, have started requesting BIA in addition to a CEA/CUA to assist decision makers in determining whether the coverage of a new technology recommended by a CEA/CUA might "break the bank" (ie, exceed available funds), even if the new interventions under consideration are cost-effective.52 If a new intervention was found to be cost-effective but resulted in a substantial financial burden, payers may elect to decline coverage as the intervention would be unaffordable. Researchers in the field of economic evaluation had paid little attention to methodological development of BIA in the past. However, the increasing demand from payers for evidence of BIA in parallel to CEA has motivated a recent publication of good research practices for BIA.51,52 A number of countries (eg, Canada, England, France, and Poland) and professional associations in the United States (eg, Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy) also include BIA in their published guidelines for economic evaluation.52 In BIA, benefits of health care interventions are not presented explicitly but are incorporated through changes in the overall treatment costs as a result of these interventions, similar to the way that cost offsets are captured in cost analysis. However, there are 2 important differences between BIA and cost analysis. First, while cost analysis compares the costs between interventions, BIA compares the costs between 2 scenarios defined by sets of interventions: a scenario consisting of a mix of existing interventions versus a scenario that also includes the new intervention. Second, BIA incorporates changes in the size of the population seeking treatment, a phenomenon known as "induced demand," and the substitution between current and new interventions when new interventions became available. In addition, the proportion of patients receiving each intervention is likely to vary over time.
There is little information on oncology-related BIA in the literature, partly due to the relative newness of this type of analysis but also because many such studies were submitted directly from pharmaceutical companies to the payers instead of to peer-reviewed journals.53 Hind et al has provided one of few oncology-related economic evaluations that contain a BIA. In that study, the authors assessed the economic value of hormonal therapies for early breast cancer, comparing the budget impact between paying for 5 years of tamoxifen therapy for 100% of breast cancer patients versus paying for 5 years of aromatase inhibitors for those same patients. They concluded that the budget impact would increase from £56.8 million in 2006 to £113.8 million in 2010.54
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LIMITATIONS AND CHALLENGES IN APPLYING ECONOMIC ANALYSES IN ONCOLOGY |
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Second, data for cancer-related economic evaluation (particularly effectiveness measures) are often obtained from clinical trials. However, characteristics of clinical trial participants may differ substantially from those of the "average" cancer patient, and thus cost-effectiveness analyses based on trial data may not correspond to real-world values. In particular, since the mix of real-world cancer patients is likely to be older and include a larger proportion of individuals with significant comorbidities than that of clinical trial patients, economic analyses based on trials may not be fully generalizable.
Third, many studies of economic evaluation are performed using a societal perspective, including all direct and indirect costs that are influenced by the disease and intervention. While such societal analyses may be appropriate for broader resource-allocation decisions, they may not be as useful for clinicians, health care systems, payers, and patients. Similarly, utilities used to calculate QALY are often collected from the general population. However, for clinical decision making, utilities collected from patients are probably more relevant.57 Thus, economic analyses that attempt to be broad enough to demonstrate costs and benefits for large groups of society may not provide information that is specific enough for a given patient or clinician.
Lastly, there is often a disconnect between evidence supported by economic evaluation and the observed practice patterns in the United States. For example, in spite of a lack of economic evidence to support the use of paclitaxel + carboplatin (versus vinorelbine + cisplatin) in the treatment of advanced NCSLC in a published CMA study,25 the paclitaxel-based regimen was still used extensively in clinical settings. Economic evaluation has become an integral part of the coverage and reimbursement decisions for adopting new health care interventions in Australia, Canada, and many European countries. These countries have created government-funded agencies, such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in the United Kingdom, Common Drug Review in Canada, and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee in Australia, to review or generate information on economic evaluation and to make recommendations to reimbursement authorities.58,59 To date, the US government has not formally endorsed the use of economic evaluation in coverage and reimbursement decisions. There had been sporadic interest in a more official role of economic evaluation for the Medicare program; however, there has not been a requirement for the use of economic evaluation to guide health care source allocation in the US public sector. The lack of US government involvement in economic evaluation has been attributed to factors such as a decentralized health care system, Americans' distaste for rationing health care, the society's embrace of new technology, and a political system strongly influenced by interest groups.60,61 However, economic evaluation has a strong presence among private health plans in the United States; many incorporate economic evidence in their formulary and reimbursement decisions. The lack of a neutral agency for economic evaluation in the United States can potentially make it difficult for clinicians to judge the quality of published US economic studies. Recently, the increasing financial pressure from the health care sector has formed a renewed interest for a government-funded organization to assess the effectiveness, comparative effectiveness, cost, and cost-effectiveness of health care interventions.62 If this initiative succeeds, economic evidence is likely to play an increased role in oncology practice in the future.
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CONCLUSION—WHY SHOULD CLINICIANS CARE ABOUT ECONOMIC ANALYSES? |
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The economic impact of cancer care has received increased scrutiny due to the high cost of many newer cancer drugs, particularly biologic agents. As presented by Meropol and Schulman,63 the drug costs for 6 months of systemic therapy for colorectal cancer can range from less than $100 for fluorouracil/leucovorin administered daily for 5 days each month to over $50,000 for weekly treatment with cetuximab. Given this tremendous range of costs, it is crucial to consider the marginal benefits associated with more expensive agents—that is, "value for money." Economic evaluations provide methods for assessing this value.
While this review has covered the methods used for economic analyses, we choose to conclude with perhaps the most important issue: why should clinicians care about economic analyses? To many, it seems obvious that understanding the relative costs and benefits of cancer treatment options is important. To others, only clinical outcomes and patient choices matter, and costs should never be a consideration in treatment decisions. We have identified 4 reasons as to why clinicians, in our opinion, should understand economic analyses and also consider costs as a factor in making decisions and presenting treatment options.
Understanding economic evaluation and considering the relative costs and benefits of expensive new medical care interventions have been part of many areas of medicine for more than 2 decades. Economic analyses have been performed for cancer-related medical interventions for several years. However, until recently results from economic analyses may not have affected oncology in the same manner that these analyses have impacted other areas of medicine; given the devastating nature of cancer, society viewed almost any expenditure to increase survival or decrease suffering as reasonable. As advances in medicine have resulted in cancer becoming a chronic disease in many aspects, the costs of these advances have resulted in increased scrutiny. Further, on a national level, recently published studies have indicated that cost-related factors (insurance and socioeconomic status) significantly affect diagnosis, treatment, and mortality among cancer patients.66,67 Therefore, in the authors' opinions, clinicians cannot ignore economics.
As we hope that this review has made clear, much of economic analysis involves comparing the costs and benefits of a medical care intervention with one or more other interventions. Clinicians are in a unique position to understand the health benefits of therapies, as well as to observe the costs (from patient, provider, health system, and potentially even societal perspectives) of these therapies. Insights regarding medical care costs and benefits from members of the cancer community can be important components in discussion of the appropriate role of economic analysis in resource-allocation decisions. Perhaps this is the most compelling reason as to why members of the oncology community should be interested in economic evaluation: unless clinicians, other cancer health care providers, and cancer researchers are active participants in discussions regarding the relative costs and benefits of new interventions, others will make these cost-effectiveness conclusions. Having members of the oncology community exclude themselves from these discussions and from the process of determining costs and benefits of new cancer therapies is unlikely to be in the best interests of cancer patients.
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SUMMARY |
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