Decision Making for Healthcare Resource Allocation: Joint v. Separate Decisions on Interacting Interventions.

ABSTRACT: Standard guidance for allocating healthcare resources based on cost-effectiveness recommends using different decision rules for independent and mutually exclusive alternatives, although there is some confusion around the definition of "mutually exclusive." This paper reviews the definitions used in the literature and shows that interactions (i.e., non-additive effects, whereby the effect of giving 2 interventions simultaneously does not equal the sum of their individual effects) are the defining feature of mutually exclusive alternatives: treatments cannot be considered independent if the costs and/or benefits of one treatment are affected by the other treatment. The paper then identifies and categorizes the situations in which interventions are likely to have non-additive effects, includi

SUBMITTER: Dakin H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5949981 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature