Identifying Conditions With High Prevalence, Cost, and Variation in Cost in US Children's Hospitals.

Importance: Identifying high priority pediatric conditions is important for setting a research agenda in hospital pediatrics that will benefit families, clinicians, and the health care system. However, the last such prioritization study was conducted more than a decade ago and used International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) codes. Objectives: To identify conditions that should be prioritized for comparative effectiveness research based on prevalence, cost, and variation in cost of hospitalizations using contemporary data at US children's hospitals. Design, Setting, and Participants: This retrospective cohort study of children with hospital encounters used data from the Pediatric Health Information System database. Children younger than 18 years with inpatient hospital encounters at 45 tertiary care US children's hospitals between January 1, 2016, and December 31, 2019, were included. Data were analyzed from March 2020 to April 2021. Main Outcomes and Measures: The condition-specific prevalence and total standardized cost, the corresponding prevalence and cost ranks, and the variation in standardized cost per encounter across hospitals were analyzed. The variation in cost was assessed using the number of outlier hospitals and intraclass correlation coefficient. Results: There were 2 882 490 inpatient hospital encounters (median [interquartile range] age, 4 [1-12] years; 1 554 024 [53.9%] boys) included. Among the 50 most prevalent and 50 most costly conditions (total, 74 conditions), 49 (66.2%) were medical, 15 (20.3%) were surgical, and 10 (13.5%) were medical/surgical. The top 10 conditions by cost accounted for $12.4 billion of $33.4 billion total costs (37.4%) and 592 815 encounters (33.8% of all encounters). Of 74 conditions, 4 conditions had an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.30 or higher (ie, major depressive disorder: ICC, 0.49; type 1 diabetes with complications: ICC, 0.36; diabetic ketoacidosis: ICC, 0.33; acute appendicitis without peritonitis: ICC, 0.30), and 9 conditions had an ICC higher than 0.20 (scoliosis: ICC, 0.27; hypertrophy of tonsils and adenoids: ICC, 0.26; supracondylar fracture of humerus: ICC, 0.25; cleft lip and palate: ICC, 0.24; acute appendicitis with peritonitis: ICC, 0.21). Examples of conditions high in prevalence, cost, and variation in cost included major depressive disorder (cost rank, 19; prevalence rank, 10; ICC, 0.49), scoliosis (cost rank, 6; prevalence rank, 38; ICC, 0.27), acute appendicitis with peritonitis (cost rank, 13; prevalence rank, 11; ICC, 0.21), asthma (cost rank, 10; prevalence rank, 2; ICC, 0.17), and dehydration (cost rank, 24; prevalence rank, 8; ICC, 0.18). Conclusions and Relevance: This cohort study found that major depressive disorder, scoliosis, acute appendicitis with peritonitis, asthma, and dehydration were high in prevalence, costs, and variation in cost. These results could help identify where future comparative effectiveness research in hospital pediatrics should be targeted to improve the care and outcomes of hospitalized children.

A call to action to address COVID-19-induced global food insecurity to prevent hunger, malnutrition, and eating pathology.

The coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19) pandemic has led to food shortages, increased food prices, and loss of income. As a result, global food insecurity alerts have been issued. The pandemic threatens millions of children and adolescents and their families currently living with or at risk for development of food insecurity. The lack of consistent access to nutritious food sources is associated with chronic physical and mental health problems and death. Studies on food insecurity and eating pathology have heightened our concern about the impact the added effect of the pandemic may have on eating behaviors of children and adolescents. Here, we want to draw attention to the need for making food security and healthy eating attitudes and behaviors a global priority during the COVID-19 pandemic to guarantee the current and future health and well-being of our children and adolescents.

Drug development post COVID-19 pandemic: toward a better system to meet current and future global health challenges.

Introduction: Despite advances in drug research and development, our knowledge of the underlying molecular mechanisms of many diseases remains inadequate. This have led to limited effective medicines for several diseases. To address these challenges, efficient strategies, novel technologies, and policies are urgently needed. The main obstacles in drug discovery and development are the mounting cost, risk, and time frame needed to develop new medicines. Fair pricing and accessibility is another unmet global challenge.Areas covered: Here, the authors cover the pace, risks, cost, and challenges facing drug development processes. Additionally, they introduce disease-associated data which demand global attention and propose solutions to overcome these challenges.Expert opinion: The massive challenges encountered during drug development urgently call for a serious global rethinking of the way this process is done. A partial solution might be if many consortiums of multi-nations, academic institutions, clinicians, pharma companies, and funding agencies gather at different fronts to crowdsource resources, share knowledge and risks. Such an ecosystem can rapidly generate first-in-class molecules that are safe, effective, and affordable. We think that this article represents a wake-up call for the scientific community to immediately reassess the current drug discovery and development procedures.

Health Services Research and Government's Spending on Healthcare Programs: A Welcome Misalignment?

Excluding capital projects, spending on hospitals, physicians and drugs makes up more than two thirds of provincial and territorial governments' healthcare spending (CIHI 2019). One expects that health services and policy research would be aligned with where the money flows and yet, there is a misalignment. For example, research as published by Healthcare Policy, is not so neatly aligned with provincial and territorial governments' healthcare spending patterns. In this issue, for instance, there are only two such articles - one related to medication adherence and cost, and another related to payment policy associated with a hospital's alternative level of care utilization. The previous issue of Healthcare Policy was similarly focused, with only two articles the study settings of which were primary care.

Prioritization of patient safety health policies: Delphi survey using patient safety experts in Japan.

Various patient safety interventions have been implemented since the late 1990s, but their evaluation has been lacking. To obtain basic information for prioritizing patient safety interventions, this study aimed to extract high-priority interventions in Japan and to identify the factors that influence the setting of priority. Six perspectives (contribution, dissemination, impact, cost, urgency, and priority) on 42 patient safety interventions classified into 3 levels (system, organizational, and clinical) were evaluated by Japanese experts using the Delphi technique. We examined the relationships of the levels and the perspectives on interventions with the transition of the consensus state in rounds 1 and 3. After extracting the high-priority interventions, a chi-squared test was used to examine the relationship of the levels and the impact/cost ratio with high priority. Regression models were used to examine the influence of each perspective on priority. There was a significant relationship between the level of interventions and the transition of the consensus state (p = 0.033). System-level interventions had a low probability of achieving consensus. "Human resources interventions," "professional education and training," "medication management/reconciliation protocols," "pay-for performance (P4P) schemes and financing for safety," "digital technology solutions to improve safety," and "hand hygiene initiatives" were extracted as high-priority interventions. The level and the impact/cost ratio of interventions had no significant relationships with high priority. In the regression model, dissemination and impact had an influence on priority (ß = -0.628 and 0.941, respectively; adjusted R-squared = 0.646). The influence of impact and dissemination on the priority of interventions suggests that it is important to examine the dissemination degree and impact of interventions in each country for prioritizing interventions.

Value of Information Analytical Methods: Report 2 of the ISPOR Value of Information Analysis Emerging Good Practices Task Force.

The allocation of healthcare resources among competing priorities requires an assessment of the expected costs and health effects of investing resources in the activities and of the opportunity cost of the expenditure. To date, much effort has been devoted to assessing the expected costs and health effects, but there remains an important need to also reflect the consequences of uncertainty in resource allocation decisions and the value of further research to reduce uncertainty. Decision making with uncertainty may turn out to be suboptimal, resulting in health loss. Consequently, there may be value in reducing uncertainty, through the collection of new evidence, to better inform resource decisions. This value can be quantified using value of information (VOI) analysis. This report from the ISPOR VOI Task Force describes methods for computing 4 VOI measures: the expected value of perfect information, expected value of partial perfect information (EVPPI), expected value of sample information (EVSI), and expected net benefit of sampling (ENBS). Several methods exist for computing EVPPI and EVSI, and this report provides guidance on selecting the most appropriate method based on the features of the decision problem. The report provides a number of recommendations for good practice when planning, undertaking, or reviewing VOI analyses. The software needed to compute VOI is discussed, and areas for future research are highlighted.

Which Priorities for Health and Well-Being Stand Out After Accounting for Tangled Threats and Costs? Simulating Potential Intervention Portfolios in Large Urban Counties.

Policy Points Interventions in a regional system with intertwined threats and costs should address those threats that have the strongest, quickest, and most pervasive cross-impacts. Instead of focusing on an individual county's apparent shortcomings, a regional intervention portfolio can yield greater results when it is designed to counter those systemic threats, especially poverty and inadequate social support, that most undermine health and well-being virtually everywhere. Likewise, efforts to reduce smoking, addiction, and violent crime and to improve routine care, health insurance, and youth education are important for most counties to unlock both short- and long-term potential. CONTEXT: Counties across the United States must contend with multiple, intertwined threats and costs that defy simple solutions. Decision makers face the necessary but difficult task of prioritizing those interventions with the greatest potential to produce equitable health and well-being. METHODS: Using County Health Rankings data for a predefined peer group of 39 urban US counties, we performed statistical regressions to identify 37 cross-impacts among 15 threats to health and well-being. Adding appropriate time delays, we then developed a dynamic model of these cross-impacts and simulated each of the counties over 20 years to assess the likely impact of 12 potential interventions-individually and in a combined portfolio-for three outcomes: (1) years of potential life lost, (2) fraction of adults in fair or poor health, and (3) total spending on urgent services. FINDINGS: The combined portfolio yielded improvements by year 20 that are considerably greater than those at year 5, indicating that the time delays have a major effect. Despite the wide variation in threat levels across counties, the list of top-ranked interventions is strikingly similar. Poverty reduction and social support were the most highly ranked interventions, even in the shorter term, for all outcomes in all counties. Interventions affecting smoking, addiction, routine care, health insurance, violent crime, and youth education also were important contributors to some outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: To safeguard health and well-being in a system dominated by tangled threats and costs, the most important priorities for a county cannot be simply inferred from a profile of its relative strengths and weaknesses. Two interventions stood out as the top priorities for almost all the counties in this study, and six others also were important contributors. Interventions directed toward these priority areas are likely to yield the greatest impact, irrespective of the county's specifics. A significant concentration of resources in a regional portfolio therefore ought to go to these strongest contributors for equitable health and well-being.

Introducing health technology assessment in Tanzania.

OBJECTIVES: Health technology assessment (HTA) is a cost-effective resource allocation tool in healthcare decision-making processes; however, its use is limited in low-income settings where countries fall short on both absorptive and technical capacity. This paper describes the journey of the introduction of HTA into decision-making processes through a case study revising the National Essential Medicines List (NEMLIT) in Tanzania. It draws lessons on establishing and strengthening transparent priority-setting processes, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS: The concept of HTA was introduced in Tanzania through revision of the NEMLIT by identifying a process for using HTA criteria and evidence-informed decision making. Training was given on using economic evidence for decision making, which was then put into practice for medicine selection for the NEMLIT. During the revision process, capacity-building workshops were held with reinforcing messages on HTA. RESULTS: Between the period 2014 and 2018, HTA was introduced in Tanzania with a formal HTA committee being established and inaugurated followed by the successful completion and adoption of HTA into the NEMLIT revision process by the end of 2017. Consequently, the country is in the process of institutionalizing HTA for decision making and priority setting. CONCLUSION: While the introduction of HTA process is country-specific, key lessons emerge that can provide an example to stakeholders in other low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) wishing to introduce priority-setting processes into health decision making.

Healthcare Resource Allocation and Priority-setting. A European Challenge.

The right to health, as a right to healthcare, represents the most expensive social right in Europe, significantly affecting the total budget of the Member States, both in universal and insurance healthcare systems. No healthcare system provides unlimited healthcare resources to all its users. The resources available for healthcare are limited compared with demand, and all healthcare systems, regardless of their financing and organisation, employ mechanisms to prioritise finite healthcare resources. The progressive increase in healthcare costs in a context of scarce resources, worsened by the fiscal crisis of the 1990s and economic crises spreading in Europe since 2007, has highlighted the ever more urgent need to address the fundamental issues of resource allocation and priority-setting at both European and national levels. Hence, priority-setting is arguably one of the most important health policy issues of our time at global, European and national levels.

Equity Weights for Priority Setting in Healthcare: Severity, Age, or Both?

BACKGROUND: Priority setting in healthcare can be guided by both efficiency and equity principles. The latter principle is often explicated in terms of disease severity and, for example, defined as absolute or proportional shortfall. These severity operationalizations do not explicitly consider patients' age, even though age may be inextricably related to severity and an equity-relevant characteristic. OBJECTIVE: This study examines the relative strength of societal preferences for severity and age for informing allocation decisions in healthcare. METHODS: We elicited preferences for severity and age in a representative sample of the public in The Netherlands (N = 1025) by applying choice tasks and person-trade-off tasks in a design in which severity levels and ages varied both separately and simultaneously between patient groups. We calculated person trade-off ratios and, in addition, applied ordinary least squares regression models to aid interpretation of the ratios when both severity and age varied. RESULTS: Respondents attached a higher weight (median of ratios: 2.46-3.50) to reimbursing treatment for relatively more severely ill and younger patients when preferences for both were elicited separately. When preferences were elicited simultaneously, respondents attached a higher weight (median of ratios: 1.98 and 2.42) to reimbursing treatment for relatively younger patients, irrespective of patients' severity levels. Ratios varied depending on severity level and age and were generally higher when the difference in severity and age was larger between groups. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that severity operationalizations and equity weights based on severity alone may not align with societal preferences. Adjusting decision-making frameworks to reflect age-related societal preferences should be considered.

Value in Health: How It Is Defined and Used in Priority Setting and Pricing in Norway.

Value in health is a concept that has been used in many different contexts. It is used in debates about priority setting, pricing of pharmaceuticals and payment systems. In the Norwegian context, value in health in priority setting is officially defined as the quality-adjusted life-years produced by an intervention. However, the value of an intervention is also adjusted based on the severity of the disease. Importantly, the value does not include gains in productivity. In the context of price setting, there is a movement toward value-based pricing. Although generally supportive, I argue that the approach is limited by noisy and incomplete indicators of outcome and that full value-based pricing of pharmaceuticals has important consequences for the distribution of costs.

Evidence, values, and funding decisions in Canadian cancer systems.

Expenditure on cancer therapies is rising rapidly in many countries, particularly for cancer drugs. In recent years, this has stimulated a global debate among the public, patients, clinicians, decision-makers, and the pharmaceutical industry on value, affordability, and sustainability propositions relating to cancer therapies. In this article, we discuss some recent developments in evidence-based approaches to priority setting and resource allocation in Canadian cancer systems. These developments include new methods for deliberative public engagement, generating and using real-world evidence, multi-criteria decision analysis, and handling uncertainty with evidence for gene therapies.

Health Technology Assessment as Part of a Broader Process for Priority Setting and Resource Allocation.

Over the last two decades, economic evaluation of health technologies has developed enormously, affirming its importance within the pursuit of efficiency in the management of health care systems. One concern that has been raised with health technology assessment (HTA) has been its operationalization within the realm of decision making. Here, we suggest a mechanism by which HTA can be understood as an input into a broader framework for priority setting and resource allocation. When HTA is seen in this light, topics that at times have had some lack of clarity, such as public engagement and disinvestment, simply become steps in the overall decision-making process.