The impact of different perspectives on the cost-effectiveness of remote patient monitoring for patients with heart failure in different European countries.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

Heart failure (HF) is a complex clinical syndrome with high mortality and hospitalization rates. Non-invasive remote patient monitoring (RPM) interventions have the potential to prevent disease worsening. However, the long-term cost-effectiveness of RPM remains unclear. This study aimed to assess the cost-effectiveness of RPM in the Netherlands (NL), the United Kingdom (UK), and Germany (DE) highlighting the differences between cost-effectiveness from a societal and healthcare perspective.

METHODS

We developed a Markov model with a lifetime horizon to assess the cost-effectiveness of RPM compared with usual care. We included HF-related hospitalization and non-hospitalization costs, intervention costs, other medical costs, informal care costs, and costs of non-medical consumption. A probabilistic sensitivity analysis and scenario analyses were performed.

RESULTS

RPM led to reductions in HF-related hospitalization costs, but total lifetime costs were higher in all three countries compared to usual care. The estimated incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs), from a societal perspective, were €27,921, €32,263, and €35,258 in NL, UK, and DE respectively. The lower ICER in the Netherlands was mainly explained by lower costs of non-medical consumption and HF-related costs outside of the hospital. ICERs, from a healthcare perspective, were €12,977, €11,432, and €11,546 in NL, the UK, and DE, respectively. The ICER was most sensitive to the effectiveness of RPM and utility values.

CONCLUSIONS

This study demonstrates that RPM for HF can be cost-effective from both healthcare and societal perspective. Including costs of living longer, such as informal care and non-medical consumption during life years gained, increased the ICER.