What Does Pharmaceutical 3D Printing Cost? A Framework and Case Study with Hydrocortisone for Adrenal Insufficiency.

Background: Pharmaceutical three-dimensional printing (3DP) technology offers an automated platform that can be utilized to manufacture personalized medicine, improving pharmacotherapy. Although 3D-printed products have entered clinical trials, no costing studies have been performed yet. Cost insights can aid researchers and industry in making informed decisions about the feasibility and scalability of 3DP.

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.

How Do Bundled Payment Initiatives Account for Differences in Patient Risk Profile? A Systematic Review.

Objectives: Bundled payments (BPs) are increasingly being adopted to enable the delivery of high-value care. For BPs to reach their goals, accounting for differences in patient risk profile (PRP) predictive of spending is crucial. However, insight is lacking into how this is done in practice.

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.

The administration of immune checkpoint inhibitors via an elastomeric pump versus conventional intravenous infusion: an economic perspective.

Background: Recent studies have underscored the potential of innovative administration methods to mitigate the capacity burden on healthcare systems, without compromising the quality of care. This study assessed and compared the resource utilization and associated costs of two distinct administration modes of immune checkpoint inhibitors: the innovative elastomeric pump and conventional intravenous infusion. This comparison can inform sustainable healthcare practices and healthcare decision-making to optimize treatment efficiency in an era of escalating healthcare demands.

Adverse selection and consumer inertia: empirical evidence from the Dutch health insurance market.

This paper examines to what extent consumer inertia can reduce adverse selection in health insurance markets. To this end, we investigate consumer choice of deductible in the Dutch health insurance market over the period 2013-2018, using panel data based on a large random sample (266 k) of all insured individuals in the Netherlands. The Dutch health insurance market offers a unique setting for studying adverse selection, because during annual open enrollment periods all adults are free to choose an extra deductible up to 500 euro per year.

Steering them softly with a quality label? A case study analysis of a patient channelling strategy without financial incentives.

Steering patients to lower priced and/or higher quality providers can increase the value of a healthcare system. In a managed care setting, health insurers may use financial incentives for this purpose. However, introducing cost-sharing differences among providers may cause enrolee discontent, which may result in disenrollment.

A critical review of the use of R in risk equalization research.

Nearly all empirical studies that estimate the coefficients of a risk equalization formula present the value of the statistical measure R. The R-value is often (implicitly) interpreted as a measure of the extent to which the risk equalization payments remove the regulation-induced predictable profits and losses on the insured, with a higher R-value indicating a better performance. In many cases, however, we do not know whether a model with R = 0.

A framework for ex-ante evaluation of the potential effects of risk equalization and risk sharing in health insurance markets with regulated competition.

Many health insurance markets are organized by principles of regulated competition. Regulators of these markets typically apply risk equalization (aka risk adjustment) and risk sharing to mitigate risk selection. Risk equalization and risk sharing can have various positive and negative effects on efficiency and fairness.

Variation in Excess Mortality Across Nursing Homes in the Netherlands During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Objectives: Nursing home residents constituted a vulnerable population during the COVID-19 pandemic, and half of all cause-attributed COVID-19 deaths occurred within nursing homes. Yet, given the low life expectancy of nursing home residents, it is unclear to what extent COVID-19 mortality increased overall mortality within this population. Moreover, there might have been differences between nursing homes in their ability to protect residents against excess mortality.

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).

A blueprint for health technology assessment capacity building: lessons learned from Malta.

Objectives: The development and strengthening of health technology assessment (HTA) capacity on the individual and organizational level and the wider environment is relevant for cooperation on HTAs. Based on the Maltese case, we provide a blueprint for building HTA capacity.

Methods: A set of activities were developed based on Pichler et al.

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.

Applying a cost-based pricing model for innovative cancer treatments subject to indication expansion: A case study for pembrolizumab and daratumumab.

Background: Expanding the indication of already approved immuno-oncology drugs presents treatment opportunities for patients but also strains healthcare systems. Cost-based pricing models are discussed as a possibility for cost containment. This study focuses on two drugs, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and daratumumab (Darzalex), to explore the potential effect of indication broadening on the estimated price when using the cost-based pricing (CBP) model proposed by Uyl-de Groot and Löwenberg (2018).

Scope and Incentives for Risk Selection in Health Insurance Markets With Regulated Competition: A Conceptual Framework and International Comparison.

In health insurance markets with regulated competition, regulators face the challenge of preventing risk selection. This paper provides a framework for analyzing the scope (i.e.

Health seeking behaviours and private sector delivery of care for non-communicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review.

Background: Globally, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading cause of mortality and morbidity placing a huge burden on individuals, families and health systems, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This rising disease burden calls for policy responses that engage the entire health care system. This study aims to synthesize evidence on how people with NCDs choose their healthcare providers in LMICs, and the outcomes of these choices, with a focus on private sector delivery.

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.

Maternal Migration Background and Mortality Among Infants Born Extremely Preterm.

Importance: Extremely preterm infants require care provided in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) to survive. In the Netherlands, a decision is made regarding active treatment between 24 weeks 0 days and 25 weeks 6 days after consultation with the parents.

Objective: To investigate the association between maternal migration background and admissions to NICUs and mortality within the first year among extremely preterm infants.