Performing Economic Evaluation of Integrated Care: Highway to Hell or Stairway to Heaven?
Health economists are increasingly interested in integrated care in order to support decision-makers to find cost-effective solutions able to tackle the threat that chronic diseases pose on population health and health and social care budgets. However, economic evaluation in integrated care is still in its early years, facing several difficulties. The aim of this paper is to describe the unique nature of integrated care as a topic for economic evaluation, explore the obstacles to perform economic evaluation, discuss methods and techniques that can be used to address them, and set the basis to develop a research agenda for health economics in integrated care. The paper joins the voices that call health economists to pay more attention to integrated care and argues that there should be no more time wasted for doing it.
Health Economics Research Centre, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, GB.
Apostolos
A
Tsiachristas
International Foundation for Integrated Care, Oxford, GB.
K Viktoria
KV
Stein
Department of Health Services Research, CAPHRI - School for Public Health and Primary Care, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands.
Silvia
S
Evers
Institute of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Maureen
M
Rutten-van Mölken
complex intervention; economic evaluation; health economics; health technology assessment; integrated care