The Half-Cycle Correction: Banish Rather Than Explain It

Jan J. Barendregt
Additional contact information
Jan J. Barendregt: University of Queensland, School of Population Health, Herston, Australia, j.barendregt@sph.uq.edu.au

Medical Decision Making, 2009, vol. 29, issue 4, 500-502

Abstract: The half-cycle correction is often used in discrete Markov models to estimate state membership. This article shows that the correction, in addition to being unintuitive, actually produces the wrong results in many circumstances. These include quality-adjusted life year (QALY) weights and unit costs that differ by cycle. The half-cycle correction is also incompatible with discounting of the obtained stream of state membership. It is furthermore shown that the life table method of estimating state membership obtains correct results under these circumstances and is also much more transparent. The article concludes that the half-cycle correction should be dropped in favor of the life table method.

Keywords: Markov Models; mathematical models and decision analysis; statistical methods. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0272989X09340585 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:medema:v:29:y:2009:i:4:p:500-502

DOI: 10.1177/0272989X09340585

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Medical Decision Making
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().