Department of Health Economics, Center for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, Kinderspitalgasse 15/1, 1090 Vienna, Austria.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Oxford OX3 7JX, UK.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Dec 22;20(1):117. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20010117.
Evidence-informed healthcare decision-making relies on high quality data inputs, including robust unit costs, which in many countries are not readily available. The objective of the Department of Health Economics' Unit Cost Online Database, developed based on systematic reviews of Austrian costing studies, is to make conducting economic evaluations from healthcare and societal perspectives more feasible with publicly available unit cost information in Austria. This article aims to describe trends in unit cost data sources and reporting using this comprehensive database as a case study to encourage relevant national and international methodological discussions. Database analysis and synthesis included publication/study characteristics and costing reporting details in line with the Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS 2022) with the year of the database launch as the cut-off point to assess how the methods have developed over time. Forty-two full economic evaluations and 278 unit costs were analyzed (2004-2016: 34 studies/232 unit costs, 2017-2022: 8 studies/46 unit costs). Although the reporting quality of costing details including the study perspective, unit cost sources and years has improved since 2017, the unit cost estimates and sources remained heterogeneous in Austria. While methodologically standardized national-level unit costs would be the gold standard, a systematically collated list of unit costs is a first step towards supporting health economic evaluations nationally.
循证医疗决策依赖于高质量的数据输入，包括可靠的单位成本，而在许多国家，这些数据并不容易获得。该数据库由卫生经济学部门开发，基于对奥地利成本研究的系统审查，旨在利用奥地利现有的公共可用单位成本信息，使从医疗保健和社会角度进行经济评估变得更加可行。本文旨在描述使用该综合数据库作为案例研究的单位成本数据来源和报告趋势，以鼓励相关的国家和国际方法学讨论。数据库分析和综合包括按照统一健康经济评估报告标准（CHEERS 2022）的出版物/研究特征和成本报告细节，以截止日期为数据库发布年份，评估方法随时间的发展变化。共分析了 42 项全经济评估和 278 项单位成本（2004-2016 年：34 项研究/232 项单位成本，2017-2022 年：8 项研究/46 项单位成本）。尽管自 2017 年以来，包括研究视角、单位成本来源和年份在内的成本细节报告质量有所提高，但奥地利的单位成本估计值和来源仍然存在异质性。虽然在方法学上标准化的国家级单位成本将是黄金标准，但系统地收集单位成本清单是支持国家范围内经济评估的第一步。
