title: Much cheaper, almost as good: decrementally cost-effective medical innovation.
abstract: Under conditions of constrained resources, cost-saving innovations may improve overall outcomes, even when they are slightly less effective than available options, by permitting more efficient reallocation of resources. The authors systematically reviewed all MEDLINE-cited cost-utility analyses written in English from 2002 to 2007 to identify and describe cost- and quality-decreasing medical innovations that might offer favorable "decrementally" cost-effective tradeoffs-defined as saving at least $100 000 per quality-adjusted life-year lost. Of 2128 cost-effectiveness ratios from 887 publications, only 9 comparisons (0.4% of total) described 8 innovations that were deemed to be decrementally cost-effective. Examples included percutaneous coronary intervention (instead of coronary artery bypass graft) for multivessel coronary disease, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (instead of electroconvulsive therapy) for drug-resistant major depression, watchful waiting for inguinal hernias, and hemodialyzer sterilization and reuse. On a per-patient basis, these innovations yielded savings from $122 to almost $12 000 but losses of 0.001 to 0.021 quality-adjusted life-years (approximately 8 hours to 1 week). These findings demonstrate the rarity of decrementally cost-effective innovations in the medical literature.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies, Tufts Medical Center, and Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: Aaron L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Nelson
authors.forename: Joshua T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Greenberg
authors.forename: David M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Kent
mesh_terms: D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D006801:Humans; D013677:Medical Laboratory Science / Q000191:economics*; D019057:Quality-Adjusted Life Years