Estimating Costs of an Implementation Intervention

Todd H. Wagner, Jean Yoon, Josephine C. Jacobs, Angela So, Amy M. Kilbourne, Wei Yu and David E. Goodrich
Additional contact information
Todd H. Wagner: Health Economics Resource Center, US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Palo Alto Health Care System, Menlo Park, CA, USA
Jean Yoon: Health Economics Resource Center, US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Palo Alto Health Care System, Menlo Park, CA, USA
Josephine C. Jacobs: Health Economics Resource Center, US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Palo Alto Health Care System, Menlo Park, CA, USA
Angela So: Health Economics Resource Center, US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Palo Alto Health Care System, Menlo Park, CA, USA
Amy M. Kilbourne: US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Quality Enhancement Research Initiative, Washington, DC, USA
Wei Yu: Health Economics Resource Center, US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Palo Alto Health Care System, Menlo Park, CA, USA
David E. Goodrich: Center for Evaluation and Implementation Resources, US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Medical Decision Making, 2020, vol. 40, issue 8, 959-967

Abstract: Health care systems frequently have to decide whether to implement interventions designed to reduce gaps in the quality of care. A lack of information on the cost of these interventions is often cited as a barrier to implementation. In this article, we describe methods for estimating the cost of implementing a complex intervention. We review methods related to the direct measurement of labor, supplies and space, information technology, and research costs. We also discuss several issues that affect cost estimates in implementation studies, including factor prices, fidelity, efficiency and scale of production, distribution, and sunk costs. We examine case studies for stroke and depression, where evidence-based treatments exist and yet gaps in the quality of care remain. Understanding the costs for implementing strategies to reduce these gaps and measuring them consistently will better inform decision makers about an intervention’s likely effect on their budget and the expected costs to implement new interventions.

Keywords: budget impact analysis; cost; cost analysis; financial management; implementation science (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0272989X20960455 (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:40:y:2020:i:8:p:959-967

DOI: 10.1177/0272989X20960455

Access Statistics for this article

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