Cost-effectiveness of community versus hospital-based mental healthcare for severe mental illness in South-East Europe: economic evaluation of five randomised trials
摘要
The RECOVER-E project supported the shift away from mental health care provided in institutional settings (treatment as usual, TAU) towards community-based mental healthcare by introducing multidisciplinary community mental health teams (CMHT) for people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and severe depression across five sites in Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Romania. This paper presents the cost-effectiveness of CMHT compared to TAU.
MethodsData from all five RECOVER-E trials (N = 931) was used to compute healthcare costs and societal costs which included additional patient and family costs, and costs stemming from productivity losses. Outcomes were incremental cost-effectiveness ratio’s (ICER) for gaining a QALY and gaining a treatment responder (based on WHODAS 2.0).
ResultsCompared to TAU, CMHT had small incremental effects favouring CMHT (QALY: M = 0·023, SD = 0·013; Response: M = 0·093, SD = 0·034). The incremental costs were higher in CMHT than in TAU as seen from both the societal and healthcare perspective (societal costs: M=€1,892, SD=€950; healthcare costs: M = 1,125, SD=€720). The ICER for gaining a QALY was €82,261 and €48,913 as seen from the societal and healthcare perspective, respectively. These ICERs were well above the willingness to pay threshold of €20,000 for gaining a QALY. A similar picture arose with treatment response as outcome.
ConclusionOverall CMHT appeared to be more effective but also more costly, with the additional cost outweighing the benefits across countries, except in Bulgaria, which may highlight that cost-effectiveness is likely to be context dependent. Therefore, a recommendation for scaling up or sustaining CMHT must also depend on arguments other than health-economic alone, such as medical ethical, equity and human rights considerations.
Trial registrationBulgaria: NCT03922425, Croatia: NCT03862209, Macedonia: NCT03892473, Montenegro: NCT03837340, Romania NCT03884933.