Diseases not only affect patients, but often also affect caregivers and family members. However, most economic analyzes do not incorporate the indirect effects of diseases on caregivers.
…to recent review of NICE assessments revealed that only 3% of technology assessments included caregivers’ health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in cost-utility analyzes (CUAs). Similarly, lamsal [2022] found that of 139 maternal-perinatal treatment or program CUAs, 38 (27%) included maternal and child health outcomes in the analyses, and of 747 pediatric CUAs, 20 (3%) represented indirect effects on family health . This tendency towards omission was also observed by Reach et al. [2022] who reported only 40 of all CUAs identified from patient interventions that incorporate quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) of family members.
To address this issue, the Health Economic Evaluation and Research (SHEER) working group was convened to identify good practices for measuring disease contagion effects on caregivers within health economic analysis. As described in Henry et al. (2024)The working group defined these indirect effects as follows:
…Indirect health effects on family and caregivers, in the context of ACE, consist of the impact of an individual’s health status on the HRQoL of family members and/or caregivers, both positive and negative. negative.
Specific recommendations provided by the SHEER working group are shown below.
The paper describes each recommendation in more detail and also lists a number of areas for future research. You can read the full article. here.
