The Valuation of Informal Care in Cost-of-Illness Studies: A Systematic Review

Juan Oliva (), Marta Trapero-Bertran, Luz Maria Peña-Longobardo and Raúl del Pozo-Rubio
Additional contact information
Marta Trapero-Bertran: Universitat Internacional de Catalunya
Luz Maria Peña-Longobardo: Universidad de Castilla La-Mancha
Raúl del Pozo-Rubio: Universidad de Castilla La-Mancha

PharmacoEconomics, 2017, vol. 35, issue 3, No 5, 345 pages

Abstract: Abstract Background There is a growing interest in incorporating informal care in cost-of-illness studies as a relevant part of the economic impact of some diseases. Objective The aim of this paper was to review the recent literature valuating the costs of informal care in a group of selected diseases from 2005 to 2015. Methods We carried out a systematic review on the economic impact of informal care, focusing on six selected diseases: arthritis or osteoarthritis, cancer, dementia, mental diseases, multiple sclerosis and stroke. Results We selected 91 cost-of-illness articles. The average weight attributed to the informal care cost over the total cost was highly relevant for dementia, stroke, mental diseases, cancer and multiple sclerosis. The most frequent valuation method applied was the opportunity cost method, followed by the proxy good method. The annual cost of informal care presented a high variability depending on the disease and geographic location. Distinguishing by type of illness, the disease with the highest annual value of informal caregiving was dementia, followed by mental illness and multiple sclerosis. The average hourly unit cost was €11.43 (2015 values), varying noticeably depending on the geographic location. Conclusion This paper identifies several aspects that should be enhanced to promote comparability between studies and countries, and it sends key messages for incorporating informal care costs to adequately measure the economic impact of diseases.

Keywords: Multiple Sclerosis; Informal Care; Contingent Valuation; Informal Caregiving; Formal Care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40273-016-0468-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:pharme:v:35:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s40273-016-0468-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40273

DOI: 10.1007/s40273-016-0468-y

Access Statistics for this article

PharmacoEconomics is currently edited by Timothy Wrightson and Christopher I. Carswell

More articles in PharmacoEconomics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().