Factors associated with patients' demand for low-value care: a scoping review.

Background: Low-value care is unnecessary care that contributes to inefficient use of health resources and constitutes a considerable proportion of healthcare expenditures worldwide. Factors contributing to patients' demand for low-value care have often been overlooked and are dispersed in the literature. Therefore, the current study aimed to systematically summarize factors associated with patients' demand for low-value care.

Perspectives on managing innovation readiness in long-term care: a Q-methodology study.

Background: The scarcity of resources in long-term care demands more than ever that organizations in this sector are prepared for innovation to ensure affordable access to care for older adults. Organizations that are innovation ready are more capable of implementing innovations. Therefore, a better understanding of how stakeholders view innovation readiness in long-term care can provide actionable strategies to enhance their innovative capacities.

Preferences of citizens in Peru for school opening during a public-health crisis: A participatory value evaluation study.

Background: The outbreak of COVID-19 was followed by an unprecedented package of measures to protect public health. Over 150 countries mandated school closures to reduce the risk of transmission. Decisions on whether to close schools involve trade-offs between important effects on public health, learning outcomes, well-being of children, productivity of parents.

Effect of alemtuzumab on fatigue, quality of life, and patient/caregiver-reported outcomes in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis-A real-world evidence study.

Background: Alemtuzumab is approved in the European Union for treating highly active relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). Patient-reported outcomes measure the treatment impact on quality of life (QoL), including fatigue, a common symptom in multiple sclerosis (MS). Chronic diseases like MS also affect the patient's caregiver.

Discussing male sexual and reproductive health in the rheumatology outpatient clinic: a Q-methodology study.

Objectives: Inflammatory arthritis (IA) has been associated with various problems related to male sexual and reproductive health (SRH). However, addressing these issues in the clinic remains a challenge. In this study, we aimed to describe the viewpoints of rheumatologists and male patients with IA regarding the aspects that influence their communication about SRH.

Including carer health-related quality of life in NICE health technology assessments in the United Kingdom.

The impact of health technologies may extend beyond the patient and affect the health of people in their network, like their informal carers. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) methods guide explicitly allows the inclusion of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) effects on carers in economic evaluations when these effects are substantial, but the proportion of NICE appraisals that includes carer HRQoL remains small. This paper discusses when inclusion of carer HRQoL is justified, how inclusion can be substantiated, and how carer HRQoL can be measured and included in health economic models.

The Cost-Effectiveness of Seizure Dogs for Persons Living With Severe Refractory Epilepsy: Results From the EPISODE Study.

Objectives: The Epilepsy Support Dog Evaluation study was commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports to inform a reimbursement decision on seizure dogs. The randomized trial found that seizure dogs reduce seizure frequency and improve health-related quality of life of persons with severe refractory epilepsy (PSREs). This article examined the cost-effectiveness (CE) of adding seizure dogs to usual care for PSREs in The Netherlands.

Different views on collaboration between older persons, informal caregivers and care professionals.

Background: Informal care features high on the policy agenda of many countries to deal with workforce shortages. As a consequence, care provision increasingly takes place in the care triad of care recipients, informal caregivers and care professionals. How collaboration between care partners takes shape depends on how the different partners perceive this collaboration.

Construct Validity, Reliability, and Responsiveness of the 10-Item Well-Being Instrument for Use in Economic Evaluation Studies.

Objectives: Economic evaluations of interventions in health and social care require outcome measures that capture their full benefits, including those beyond health. This study aimed to assess construct validity, test-retest reliability, and responsiveness of the newly developed 10-item Well-being instrument (WiX).

Methods: Data were gathered via an online survey in a representative sample of the adult general population in The Netherlands (N = 1045).

Effectiveness of Seizure Dogs for People With Severe Refractory Epilepsy: Results From the EPISODE Study.

Background And Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate whether people living with severe medically refractory epilepsy (PSRE) benefit from a seizure dog.

Methods: An individual-level stepped-wedge randomized controlled trial was conducted. The study was conducted in the Netherlands among adults with daily to weekly seizures.

On spillovers in economic evaluations: definition, mapping review and research agenda.

An important issue in economic evaluations is determining whether all relevant impacts are considered, given the perspective chosen for the analysis. Acknowledging that patients are not isolated individuals has important implications in this context. Increasingly, the term "spillovers" is used to label consequences of health interventions on others.

Public preferences for the allocation of societal resources over different healthcare purposes.

Objective: Increasing healthcare expenditures require governments to make difficult prioritization decisions. Considering public preferences can help raise citizens' support. Previous research has predominantly elicited preferences for the allocation of public resources towards specific treatments or patient groups and principles for resource allocation.

Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE): A New Preference-Elicitation Method for Decision Making in Healthcare.

Participatory value evaluation (PVE) has recently been introduced in the field of health as a new method to elicit stated preferences for public policies. PVE is a method in which respondents in a choice experiment are presented with various policy options and their attributes, and are asked to compose their portfolio of preference given a public-resource constraint. This paper aims to illustrate PVE's potential for informing healthcare decision making and to position it relative to established preference-elicitation methods.

Neuromechanics of finger hangs with arm lock-offs: analyzing joint moments and muscle activations to improve practice guidelines for climbing.

Introduction: Climbing imposes substantial demands on the upper limbs and understanding the mechanical loads experienced by the joints during climbing movements is crucial for injury prevention and optimizing training protocols. This study aimed to quantify and compare upper limb joint loads and muscle activations during isometric finger hanging exercises with different arm lock-off positions.

Methods: Seventeen recreational climbers performed six finger dead hangs with arm lock-offs at 90° and 135° of elbow flexion, as well as arms fully extended.

Vaccine hesitancy comes in waves: Longitudinal evidence on willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19 from seven European countries.

Aim: This paper investigates the prevalence and determinants of three main states of people's willingness to be vaccinated (WTBV) against COVID-19 - willing, unwilling and hesitant - and the occurrence and predictors of shifts between these states over time. Understanding the dynamics of vaccine intentions is crucial for developing targeted campaigns to increase uptake and emergency response preparedness.

Study Design: A panel survey consisting of 9 quarterly waves of data collected between April 2020 and January 2022.

Braving the waves: exploring capability well-being patterns in seven European countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic considerably impacted the lives of European citizens. This study aims to provide a nuanced picture of well-being patterns during the pandemic across Europe with a special focus on relevant socio-economic sub-groups. This observational study uses data from a repeated, cross-sectional, representative population survey with nine waves of data from seven European countries from April 2020 to January 2022.

Adaptation in life satisfaction and self-assessed health to disability - Evidence from the UK.

Experiencing deteriorating health has implications for your quality of life. The theory of adaptation suggests that with time spend living in a health state individuals can adapt, resulting in observed quality of life levels to revert or stagnate despite persistently decreased health. Adaptation has implications for the use of subjective quality of life indicators when quantifying the impact of health changes or the benefits from new medical technologies.

Self-interest, positional concerns and distributional considerations in healthcare preferences.

Efficiently allocating scarce healthcare resources requires nuanced understanding of individual and collective interests as well as relative concerns, which may overlap or conflict. This paper is the first to empirically investigate whether and to what extent self-interest (SI), positional concerns (PC) and distributional considerations (DC) simultaneously explain individual decision making related to access to healthcare services. Our investigation is based on a stated choice experiment conducted in two countries with different healthcare systems, the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK).

Public Preferences for Introducing a COVID-19 Certificate: A Discrete Choice Experiment in the Netherlands.

Objective: Here we investigate public preferences for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) certificates in the Netherlands, and whether these preferences differ between subgroups in the population.

Methods: A survey including a discrete choice experiment was administered to 1500 members of the adult population of the Netherlands. Each participant was asked to choose between hypothetical COVID-19 certificates that differed in seven attributes: the starting date, and whether the certificate allowed gathering with multiple people, shopping without appointment, visiting bars and restaurants, visiting cinemas and theatres, attending events, and practising indoor sports.

Production Losses due to Absenteeism and Presenteeism: The Influence of Compensation Mechanisms and Multiplier Effects.

Background: Productivity costs can form a large and influential component of total costs in an economic evaluation taking a societal perspective. In calculating productivity costs, estimating productivity losses is a central element. Compensation mechanisms and multiplier effects may influence these losses but remain understudied.

Health-related quality of life in seven European countries throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from the European COvid Survey (ECOS).

Purpose: To investigate health-related quality of life (HRQoL) over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in seven European countries and its association with selected sociodemographic as well as COVID-19-related variables.

Methods: We used longitudinal data from nine quarterly waves collected between April 2020 and January 2022 (sample size per wave ranging from N = 7025 to 7300) of the European COvid Survey (ECOS), a representative survey of adults in Germany, United Kingdom, Denmark, Netherlands, France, Portugal and Italy. HRQoL was measured using the EQ-5D-5L.

Preferences for investment in and allocation of additional healthcare capacity.

Policy makers need to make decisions regarding the allocation of scarce healthcare resources. We study preferences for investment in additional healthcare capacity and allocation between two regions, focusing on reducing waiting time for elective surgery for a physical health problem. We elicit preferences from a societal and an individual perspective, with unequal initial waiting times between the two regions.