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Measuring Cost-Effectiveness in Palliative Care

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Textbook of Palliative Care

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Abstract

Resources for health care will always be scarce and choices have to be made within palliative care as well as between palliative care and other services. Good choices are based on good evidence on value for money. In principle, we can compare the benefits of all health care interventions using the quality-adjusted life year (QALY) measure. However, there are multiple reasons to question the fitness for purpose of QALY analyses in evaluating palliative and end-of-life care. Tools are needed that measure and value services against the objectives of care, that take account of the wider group of beneficiaries and that value good processes as well as outcomes. Measuring costs and cost-effects in this field faces additional obstacles. Studies estimating the effect of palliative care on costs have identified substantive variation by intervention timing and comorbidity count. A critical challenge is posed by the complexity and heterogeneity of the interventions and populations under assessment.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Health Policy and Management, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Charles Normand & Peter May

  2. Cicely Saunders Institute Of Palliative Care, Policy and Rehabilitation, King’s College London, London, UK

    Charles Normand

  3. The Irish Longitudinal study on Ageing (TILDA), Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Peter May

Authors
  1. Charles Normand
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  2. Peter May
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Charles Normand .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Medicine,Palliative Care, HammondCare, The University of Sydney School of Medicine, Sydney, Australia

    Roderick Duncan MacLeod

  2. VUB-UGhent End-of-Life Care Research Group, Department of Family Medicine and Chronic Care and Department of Clinical Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium

    Lieve Van den Block

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Normand, C., May, P. (2019). Measuring Cost-Effectiveness in Palliative Care. In: MacLeod, R., Van den Block, L. (eds) Textbook of Palliative Care. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77740-5_101

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