Keeney, Edna;
Memtsa, Maria;
Goodhart, Venetia;
Jurkovic, Davor;
Ambler, Gareth;
Khan, Nazim;
Round, Jeff;
(2022)
An observational cohort study of health outcomes and costs associated with early pregnancy assessment units in the UK.
BMC Health Services Research
, 22
(1)
, Article 319. 10.1186/s12913-022-07709-9.
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Abstract
Background: The objective of this study was to assess the impact of consultant presence, volume of patients seen and weekend opening on the health and cost-related outcomes associated with different Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit (EPAU) configurations. Methods: This was an observational study with a prospective cohort design. Six thousand six hundred six pregnant women (16 years of age and over) attending EPAUs because of suspected early pregnancy complications were recruited from 44 EPAUs across the UK. The main outcome measures were quality of life, costs, and anxiety. Results: Costs, quality of life and anxiety scores were similar across configurations with little evidence to suggest an impact of consultant presence, weekend opening or volume of patients seen. Mean overall costs varied from £92 (95% CI £85 - £98) for a diagnosis of normally developing pregnancy to £1793 (95% CI £1346 - £2240) for a molar pregnancy. EQ-5D-5L score increased from 0.85 (95% CI 0.84–0.86) at baseline to 0.91 (95% CI 0.90–0.92) at 4 weeks for the 573 women who completed questionnaires at both time points, largely due to improvements in the pain/discomfort and anxiety/depression dimensions. 78% of women reported a decrease in their anxiety score immediately following their EPAU appointment. Conclusions: EPAU configuration, as specified in this study, had limited impact on any of the outcomes examined. However, it is clear that care provided in the EPAU has a positive overall effect on women’s health and emotional wellbeing, with significant improvements in EQ-5D and anxiety shown following an EPAU visit.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | An observational cohort study of health outcomes and costs associated with early pregnancy assessment units in the UK |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s12913-022-07709-9 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-07709-9 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
| Keywords: | Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Health Care Sciences & Services, Early pregnancy, Cohort study, Cost-effectiveness, Quality of life |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL EGA Institute for Womens Health > Reproductive Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL EGA Institute for Womens Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Statistical Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10145996 |
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