Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published
How prevalent are implausible EQ-5D-5L health states and how do they affect valuation? A study combining quantitative and qualitative evidence.
The EQ-5D-5L is able to describe a lot of different health states (3,125, to be precise), including some that don’t seem likely to ever be observed. For example, it’s difficult to conceive of somebody having extreme problems in pain/discomfort and anxiety/depression while also having no problems with usual activities. Valuation studies exclude these kinds of states because it’s thought that their inclusion could negatively affect the quality of the data. But there isn’t much evidence to help us understand how ‘implausibility’ might affect valuations, or which health states are seen as implausible.
This study is based on an EQ-5D-5L valuation exercise with 890 students in China. The valuation was conducted using the EQ VAS, rather than the standard EuroQol valuation protocol, with up to 197 states being valued by each student. Two weeks after conducting the valuation, participants were asked to indicate (yes or no) whether or not the states were implausible. After that, a small group were invited to participate in a focus group or interview.
No health state was unanimously identified as implausible. Only four states were unanimously rated as not being implausible. 910 of the 3,125 states defined by the EQ-5D-5L were rated implausible by at least half of the people who rated them. States more commonly rated as implausible were of moderate severity overall, but with divergent severities between states (i.e. 5s and 1s together). Overall, implausibility was associated with lower valuations.
Four broad themes arose from the qualitative work, namely i) reasons for implausibility, ii) difficulties in valuing implausible states, iii) strategies for valuing implausible states, and iv) values of implausible states. Some states were considered to have logical conflicts, with some dimensions being seen as mutually inclusive (e.g. walking around is a usual activity). The authors outline the themes and sub-themes, which are a valuable contribution to our understanding of what people think when they complete a valuation study.
This study makes plain the fact that there is a lot of heterogeneity in perceptions of implausibility. But the paper doesn’t fully address the issue of what plausibility actually means. The authors describe it as subjective. I’m not sure about that. For me, it’s an empirical question. If states are observed in practice, they are plausible. We need meaningful valuations of states that are observed, so perhaps the probability of a state being included in a valuation exercise should correspond to the probability of it being observed in reality. The difficulty of valuing a state may relate to plausibility – as this work shows – but that difficulty is a separate issue. Future research on implausible health states should be aligned with research on respondents’
An EU-wide approach to HTA: an irrelevant development or an opportunity not to be missed? The European Journal of Health Economics [PubMed] Published 14th March 2019
The use of health technology assessment is now widespread across the EU. The European Commission recently saw an opportunity to rationalise disparate processes and proposed new regulation for cooperation in HTA across EU countries. In particular, the proposal targets cooperation in the assessment of the relative effectiveness of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. A key purpose is to reduce duplication of efforts, but it should also make the basis for national decision-making more consistent.
The authors of this editorial argue that the regulation needs to provide more clarity, in the definition of clinical value, and of the quality of evidence that is acceptable, which vary across
As the final paragraph argues, EU cooperation in HTA isn’t likely to be associated with much in the way of savings. This is because appraisals will still need to be conducted in each country, as well as an assessment of country-specific epidemiology and other features of the population. The main value of cooperation could be in establishing a stronger position for the EU in negotiating in matters of drug design and evidence requirements. Not that we needed any more reasons to stop Brexit.
I do not believe that we need a new generic measure of health. This paper was always going to have a hard time convincing me otherwise…
The premise for this work is that generic preference-based measures of health (such as the EQ-5D) were not developed with patients. True. So the authors set out to create one that is. A key feature of this study is the adoption of a framework that aligns with the multiattribute preference response model, whereby respondents rate their own health state relative to another. This is run through a mobile phone app.
The authors start by extracting candidate items from existing health frameworks and generic measures (which doesn’t seem to be a particularly patient-centred approach) and some domains were excluded for reasons that are not at all clear. 47 domains were included after overlapping candidates were removed. The 47 were classified as physical, mental, social, or ‘meta’. An online survey was conducted by a market research company. 2,256 ‘patients’ (people with diseases or serious complaints) were asked which 9 domains they thought were most important. Why 9? Because the authors figured it was the maximum that could fit on the screen of a mobile phone.
Of the candidate items, 5 were regularly selected in the survey: pain, personal relationships, fatigue, memory, and vision. Mobility and daily activities were also judged important enough to be included. Independence and self-esteem were added as paired domains and hearing was paired with the vision domain. The authors also added anxiety/depression as a pair of domains because they thought it was important. Thus, 12 items were included altogether, of which 6 were parts of pairs. Items were rephrased according to the researchers’ preferences. Each item was given 4 response levels.
It is true to say (as the authors do) that most generic preference-based measures (most notably the EQ-5D) were not developed with direct patient input. The argument goes that this somehow undermines the measure. But there are a) plenty of
Setting aside my scepticism about the need for a new measure, I have a lot of problems with this study and with the resulting CS-Base instrument. The defining feature of its development seems to be arbitrariness. The underlying framework (as far as it is defined) does not seem well-grounded. The selection of items was largely driven by researchers. The wording was entirely driven by the researchers. The measure cannot justifiably be called ‘patient-centred’. It is researcher-centred, even if the researchers were able to refer to a survey of patients. And the whole thing has nothing whatsoever to do with preferences. The measure may prove fantastic at capturing health outcomes, but if it does it will be in spite of the methods used for its development, not because of them. Ironically, that would be a good advert for researcher-centred outcome development.
Proximity to death and health care expenditure increase revisited: a 15-year panel analysis of elderly persons. Health Economics Review [PubMed] [RePEc] Published 11th March 2019
It is widely acknowledged that – on average – people incur a large proportion of their lifetime health care costs in the last few years of their life. But there’s still a question mark over whether it is proximity to death that drives costs or age-related morbidity. The two have very different implications – we want people to be living for longer, but we probably don’t want them to be dying for longer. There’s growing evidence that proximity to death is very important, but it isn’t clear how important – if at all – ageing is. It’s important to understand this, particularly in predicting the impacts of demographic changes.
This study uses Swiss health insurance claims data for around 104,000 people over the age of 60 between 1996 and 2011. Two-part regression models were used to estimate health care expenditures conditional on them being greater than zero. The author analysed both birth cohorts and age classes to look at age-associated drivers of health care expenditure.
As expected, health care expenditures increased with age. The models imply that proximity-to-death has grown in importance over time. For the 1931-35 birth cohort, for example, the proportion of expenditures explained by proximity-to-death rose from 19% to 31%. Expenditures were partly explained by morbidity, and this effect appeared to be relatively constant over time. Thus, proximity to death is not the only determinant of rising expenditures (even if it is an important one). Looking at different age classes over time, there was no clear picture in the trajectory of health care expenditures. For the oldest age groups (76-85), health care expenditures were growing, but for some of the younger groups, costs appeared to be decreasing over time. This study paints a complex picture of health care expenditures, calling for complex policy responses. Part of this could be supporting people to commence palliative care earlier, but there is also a need for more efficient management of chronic illness over the long term.
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