Program of Child Health Evaluative Sciences, The Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, Toronto, Canada.
Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
Autism Res. 2023 Nov;16(11):2061-2070. doi: 10.1002/aur.3014. Epub 2023 Aug 22.
Economic evaluation is used to determine the optimal provision of services and programs under budget constraints and to inform public and private payer funding decisions. To maximize value-for-money in the design and delivery of programs and services for persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), it's essential to generate high-quality economic evidence to inform budget allocation. There is a paucity however, of economic evaluations of interventions for ASD. This is due in part to challenges in conducting economic evaluations in this population and the lack of guidance on suitable approaches. These challenges are related to the inherent heterogeneity of the autistic population; establishing short- and long-term effectiveness; measurement of costs and the availability of valid instruments for collecting economic data; the appropriateness of outcomes for use in economic evaluation; and achieving statistical power. This commentary addresses a lack of awareness and needed guidance on these issues by discussing the challenges and providing recommendations for how economic evaluations in ASD could be improved to generate high-quality evidence for program funding decision-making.
经济评估用于在预算限制下确定服务和计划的最佳提供方式，并为公共和私人支付者的资金决策提供信息。为了在设计和提供自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者的计划和服务方面实现物有所值，必须生成高质量的经济证据来为预算分配提供信息。然而，针对 ASD 的干预措施的经济评估却很少。这部分是由于在该人群中进行经济评估存在挑战，以及缺乏关于合适方法的指导。这些挑战与自闭症人群固有的异质性有关；确定短期和长期效果；成本的衡量以及用于收集经济数据的有效工具的可用性；经济评估中使用的结果的适当性；以及实现统计能力。本评论通过讨论挑战并就如何改进 ASD 中的经济评估以生成用于计划供资决策的高质量证据提出建议，解决了对这些问题的认识不足和必要的指导问题。
