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Bridging the Gap: Exploring the Barriers to Using Economic Evidence in Healthcare Decision Making and Strategies for Improving Uptake

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Abstract

Evidence from economic evaluations is often not used to inform healthcare policy despite being well regarded by policy makers and physicians. This article employs the accessibility and acceptability framework to review the barriers to using evidence from economic evaluation in healthcare policy and the strategies used to overcome these barriers. Economic evaluations are often inaccessible to policymakers due to the absence of relevant economic evaluations, the time and cost required to conduct and interpret economic evaluations, and lack of expertise to evaluate quality and interpret results. Consistently reported factors that limit the translation of findings from economic evaluations into healthcare policy include poor quality of research informing economic evaluations, assumptions used in economic modelling, conflicts of interest, difficulties in transferring resources between sectors, negative attitudes to healthcare rationing, and the absence of equity considerations. Strategies to overcome these barriers have been suggested in the literature, including training, structured abstract databases, rapid evaluation, reporting checklists for journals, and considering factors other than cost effectiveness in economic evaluations, such as equity or budget impact. The factors that prevent or encourage decision makers to use evidence from economic evaluations have been identified, but the relative importance of these factors to decision makers is uncertain.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the Centre of Research Excellence for Reducing Hospital Acquired Infections. The authors have no conflicts of interest that are directly relevant to the content of this manuscript.

Author contributions

Gregory Merlo is the guarantor of the overall content. The idea of the paper was developed by Gregory Merlo and Katie Page. The manuscript was prepared by Gregory Merlo. Katie Page, Julie Ratcliffe, Kate Halton and Nicholas Graves contributed to this paper by reviewing the manuscript and adding content.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre of Research Excellence in Reducing Healthcare Associated Infections (CRE-RHAI), Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia

    Gregory Merlo, Katie Page, Kate Halton & Nicholas Graves

  2. Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia

    Julie Ratcliffe

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  1. Gregory Merlo
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  2. Katie Page
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  3. Julie Ratcliffe
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Correspondence to Gregory Merlo.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on The influence of Health Economists on Health Policy.

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Merlo, G., Page, K., Ratcliffe, J. et al. Bridging the Gap: Exploring the Barriers to Using Economic Evidence in Healthcare Decision Making and Strategies for Improving Uptake. Appl Health Econ Health Policy 13, 303–309 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40258-014-0132-7

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