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PURPOSE: The SD-16 is a 16-item instrument assessing social distress in cancer patients. In addition to work underlining the scale's reliability, validity and clinical utility, recent research has also determined minimally important differences (MID) for the instrument. The aim of this study was to assess whether item locations remained stable over time, in order to support the longitudinal use of the instrument.
METHODS: Data were collated from cancer patients (N = 123) who had completed the SD-16 at four time points (baseline, 6 months, 1 and 2 years). The Partial Credit Model (Rasch analysis) was applied to the data and item fit evaluated against published criteria. Measurement invariance of item location and person measures over time was assessed using analysis of variance.
RESULTS: Good item fit was found with the exception of one item ("work"), which demonstrated misfit at two time points. No statistically significant differences were found for item locations. As anticipated, there were changes over time in patients' scores, particularly in the first 6 months.
CONCLUSIONS: The instrument can be used longitudinally to accurately assess changes in cancer patients' social distress.
There is a new merging of health economics and nutrition disciplines to assess the impact of diet on health and disease prevention and to characterise the health and economic aspects of specific changes in nutritional behaviour and nutrition recommendations. A rationale exists for developing the field of nutrition economics which could offer a better understanding of both nutrition, in the context of having a significant influence on health outcomes, and economics, in order to estimate the absolute and relative monetary impact of health measures. For this purpose, an expert meeting assessed questions aimed at clarifying the scope and identifying the key issues that should be taken into consideration in developing nutrition economics as a discipline that could potentially address important questions. We propose a first multidisciplinary outline for understanding the principles and particular characteristics of this emerging field. We summarise here the concepts and the observations of workshop participants and propose a basic setting for nutrition economics and health outcomes research as a novel discipline to support nutrition, health economics and health policy development in an evidence and health-benefit-based manner.
No abstract available
OBJECTIVES: Bowel cancer is the second most common cancer in England and Wales, accounting for approximately 13,000 deaths per year. Economic evaluations and national guidance have been produced for individual treatments for bowel cancer. However, it has been suggested that Primary Care Trusts develop program budgeting or equivalent methodology demonstrating a whole system approach to investment and disinvestment. The objective of this study was to provide a baseline framework for considering a whole system approach to estimate the direct costs of bowel cancer services provided by the National Health Service (NHS) in England.
METHODS: A treatment pathway, developed in 2005, was used to construct a service pathway model to estimate the direct cost of bowel cancer services in England.
RESULTS: The service pathway model estimated the direct cost of bowel cancer services to the NHS to be in excess of £1 billion in 2005. Thirty-five percent of the cost is attributable to the screening and testing of patients with suspected bowel cancer, subsequently diagnosed as cancer-free.
CONCLUSIONS: This study is believed to be the most comprehensive attempt to identify the direct cost of managing bowel cancer services in England. The approach adopted could be useful to assist local decision makers in identifying those aspects of the pathway that are most uncertain in terms of their cost-effectiveness and as a basis to explore the implications of re-allocated resources. Research recommendations include the need for detailed costs on surgical procedures, high-risk patients and the utilization of the methods used in this study across other cancers.
No abstract available
OBJECTIVES AND METHODS: Health technology assessment (HTA) often requires the identification and review of economic evaluations and models. This study surveys the available specific and general resources to search to identify economic evaluations. It also provides information on efficient searching of those resources and comments on the current evidence-base.
RESULTS: Published checklists recommend searching for economic evaluations in specific information resources which collect economic evaluations such as NHS EED and HEED, followed by top-up searches of large biomedical bibliographic databases (such as MEDLINE and EMBASE). Other resources such as the HTA and DARE databases can yield reports of economic evaluations. Searches within NHS EED and HEED can be made more efficient by using database-specific search options. Searches within large biomedical databases such as MEDLINE and EMBASE require the use of economic search terms called search filters. Search filters are highly sensitive, retrieving most economic evaluations, but suffer from low precision returning many irrelevant records which need to be assessed.
CONCLUSIONS: It is relatively easy to identify rapidly a high proportion of economic evaluations but more research is required to improve the efficiency of this process. There are key high yield resources to search but more evidence is required on their overlap and unique contribution to searches. The value of other resources, particularly those providing access to gray literature, should be explored. Research into efficient retrieval requires clear definitions of economic evaluations to allow comparison across studies.
In 2006 the Scottish Government provided just over £8 million to help 32 health and social care partnerships to develop telecare services. This paper presents a summary of the 2007-2008 evaluation of the Scottish Telecare Development. This evaluation focused on measuring overall program progress toward eight predefined Scottish Telecare Development objectives. Results indicate that the initial investment has resulted in significant savings to the health and social care sectors. Additionally, telecare provides opportunities to promote independence and improve the quality of life of service users and their informal carers. However, some caution needs to be taken in interpreting the findings as results are based on self-reported performance from partnerships, and many of the reported monetary "savings" are actually efficiency savings and are unlikely, in practice, to be cash-releasing.
