Freriks, RD;
Mierau, JO;
Buskens, E;
Pizzo, E;
Luijckx, G-J;
van der Zee, D-J;
Lahr, MMH;
(2020)
Centralising acute stroke care within clinical practice in the Netherlands: lower bounds of the causal impact.
BMC Health Services Research
, 20
, Article 103. 10.1186/s12913-020-4959-3.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND Authors in previous studies demonstrated that centralising acute stroke care is associated with an increased chance of timely Intra-Venous Thrombolysis (IVT) and lower costs compared to care at community hospitals. In this study we estimated the lower bound of the causal impact of centralising IVT on health and cost outcomes within clinical practice in the Northern Netherlands. METHODS We used observational data from 267 and 780 patients in a centralised and decentralised system, respectively. The original dataset was linked to the hospital information systems. Literature on healthcare costs and Quality of Life (QoL) values up to 3 months post-stroke was searched to complete the input. We used Synthetic Control Methods (SCM) to counter selection bias. Differences in SCM outcomes included 95% Confidence Intervals (CI). To deal with unobserved heterogeneity we focused on recently developed methods to obtain the lower bounds of the causal impact. RESULTS Using SCM to assess centralising acute stroke 3 months post-stroke revealed healthcare savings of $US 1735 (CI, 505 to 2966) while gaining 0.03 (CI, − 0.01 to 0.73) QoL per patient. The corresponding lower bounds of the causal impact are $US 1581 and 0.01. The dominant effect remained stable in the deterministic sensitivity analyses with $US 1360 (CI, 476 to 2244) as the most conservative estimate. CONCLUSIONS In this study we showed that a centralised system for acute stroke care appeared both cost-saving and yielded better health outcomes. The results are highly relevant for policy makers, as this is the first study to address the issues of selection and unobserved heterogeneity in the evaluation of centralising acute stroke care, hence presenting causal estimates for budget decisions.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Centralising acute stroke care within clinical practice in the Netherlands: lower bounds of the causal impact |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s12913-020-4959-3 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-020-4959-3 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health > Applied Health Research |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10092069 |
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