Cost-Effectiveness of One Year Dementia Follow-Up Care by Memory Clinics or General Practitioners: Economic Evaluation of a Randomised Controlled Trial

Els Meeuwsen, René Melis, Geert van der Aa, Gertie Golüke-Willemse, Benoit de Leest, Frank van Raak, Carla Schölzel-Dorenbos, Desiree Verheijen, Frans Verhey, Marieke Visser, Claire Wolfs, Eddy Adang and Marcel Olde Rikkert

PLOS ONE, 2013, vol. 8, issue 11, 1-7

Abstract: Objective: To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of post-diagnosis dementia treatment and coordination of care by memory clinics compared to general practitioners’ care. Methods: A multicentre randomised trial with 175 community dwelling patients newly diagnosed with mild to moderate dementia, and their informal caregivers, with twelve months’ follow-up. Cost-effectiveness was evaluated from a societal point of view and presented as incremental cost per quality adjusted life year. To establish cost-effectiveness, a cost-utility analysis was conducted using utilities based on the EQ-5D. Uncertainty surrounding the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (difference in costs divided by difference in effects) was calculated by bootstrapping from the original data. Results: Compared to general practitioners’ care, treatment by the memory clinics was on average €1024 (95% CI: −€7723 to €5674) cheaper, and showed a non-significant decrease of 0.025 (95% CI: −0.114 to 0.064) quality adjusted life years. The incremental cost-effectiveness point estimate from the bootstrap simulation was € 41 442 per QALY lost if one would use memory clinic care instead of general practitioner care. Conclusion: No evidence was found that memory clinics were more cost-effective compared to general practitioners with regard to post-diagnosis treatment and coordination of care of patients with dementia in the first year after diagnosis. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00554047

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0079797 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 79797&type=printable (application/pdf)

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:plo:pone00:0079797

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0079797

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().