When we are judging the cost-effectiveness of a treatment or intervention, we’re really asking how much bang for the buck we’re getting for our healthcare spending. That can be relatively easy when we’re talking about life and death. But how do we measure improvements in quality? The most widely used method is through the use of utility values, and we’ll show you how we calculate those in this week’s Healthcare Triage:
A lot of this can be found in a paper we published in the Journal of Pediatrics, but it may be gated. Here’s the key results for those of you who are interested. These are utility values parents gave us for their children for a variety of health states:
| Standard Gamble | Time Tradeoff | |||
| Disease state | Mean | Median | Mean | Median |
| Perfect health | 1 | – | 1 | – |
| Otitis media with pain | 0.96 | 1 | 0.97 | 1 |
| Mild ADHD | 0.94 | 1 | 0.93 | 1 |
| 10-day hospitalization | 0.94 | 1 | 0.95 | 1 |
| Moderate gastroenteritis | 0.93 | 1 | 0.94 | 1 |
| Moderate allergic reaction | 0.93 | 1 | 0.93 | 1 |
| Severe ADHD | 0.92 | 0.99 | 0.9 | 0.99 |
| Mild hearing loss | 0.92 | 0.99 | 0.93 | 0.99 |
| Moderate hearing loss | 0.91 | 0.99 | 0.92 | 0.99 |
| Severe allergic reaction | 0.91 | 0.99 | 0.91 | 0.99 |
| Mild intermittent asthma | 0.91 | 0.99 | 0.91 | 0.98 |
| Mild persistent asthma | 0.9 | 0.98 | 0.91 | 0.99 |
| Severe gastroenteritis | 0.9 | 1 | 0.92 | 1 |
| Mild bilateral vision loss | 0.89 | 0.97 | 0.91 | 0.99 |
| Moderate persistent asthma | 0.88 | 0.97 | 0.91 | 0.97 |
| Monocular blindness | 0.88 | 0.96 | 0.89 | 0.96 |
| 10-day intensive care unit hospitalization | 0.87 | 0.98 | 0.91 | 1 |
| Mild cerebral palsy | 0.87 | 0.96 | 0.88 | 0.96 |
| Severe hearing loss | 0.86 | 0.94 | 0.86 | 0.94 |
| Mild seizure disorder | 0.85 | 0.96 | 0.86 | 0.96 |
| Moderate bilateral vision loss | 0.85 | 0.94 | 0.86 | 0.94 |
| Mild mental retardation | 0.84 | 0.91 | 0.83 | 0.93 |
| Moderate seizure disorder | 0.84 | 0.92 | 0.83 | 0.9 |
| Severe persistent asthma | 0.83 | 0.93 | 0.85 | 0.93 |
| Severe bilateral vision loss | 0.81 | 0.89 | 0.81 | 0.89 |
| Moderate mental retardation | 0.79 | 0.86 | 0.79 | 0.87 |
| Moderate cerebral palsy | 0.76 | 0.8 | 0.76 | 0.86 |
| Severe seizure disorder | 0.7 | 0.75 | 0.71 | 0.8 |
| Severe cerebral palsy | 0.6 | 0.5 | 0.55 | 0.5 |
| Severe mental retardation | 0.59 | 0.5 | 0.51 | 0.5 |
