Health economic evaluation - An option for osteopathy?

Item

Title
Health economic evaluation - An option for osteopathy?
Author(s)
Perndl Monika
Abstract
Study Design
Literature Study
Outline/Problem Definition
Osteopathy strives for official recognition in Austria but until now it could not reach this objective. At the same time, Austrian politicians advocate considerable cuts in expenses for health care. How can osteopathy now find its place in such a system? Other countries (UK, USA, the Netherlands,…) use health economic evaluation studies to make allocation decisions in health care. Or they have institutes to promote the development of these evaluation methods. Also Austria has recently founded the Federal Institute for Quality in the Health Care System (Bundesinstitut für Qualität im Gesundheitswesen, BIQG).
Research Question & Objective
The question is how can the health economic analysis be applied to osteopathy?
To describe the methods of health economic evaluations and look at how these methods have already been implemented in the context of clinical studies also in the field of osteopathy. In addition, the results of these evaluations are critically reviewed to assess the quality of the relevant health economic studies.
Hypothesis
Health economic evaluation is a possible instument for osteopathy.
Relevance for the Patients
As is is no clinical study there is no expicit relevance for the patients. If economic evaluation becomes standard and osteopathy can prove its efficiency, patients will also have their benefit from it.
Relevance for Osteopathy
As mentioned above, osteopathy wants to be recognized in the Austrian helth care system. To give osteopathy an additional argument Health economic evaluation might be useful.
Methodology
First, a literature research was carried out by means of several online databases (Medline, Pubmed, Cochrane,…). The search was then extended to other more general web resources (Google, Wikipedia) and more specific databases (healtheconomics.com, healtheconomics.nl, euroqol.org,…). Examples for key words used in the searches are: cost-utility analysis (CUA), cost-
effectiveness analysis (CEA),… AND osteopathy, low back pain, spinal manipulation,…

Results
The first section of this paper presents general considerations and explanations of health economic evaluation methods. It also points out aspects that lend themselves for discussions. The second section provides examples of studies and analyzes their quality on the basis of a checklist for health economic evaluations.
Critical Reflection/Perspectives/Conclusions
Health economic evaluation methods cannot be regarded as instruments that can or should be applied easily and without much consideration. It is important to recruit experts for such evaluations. The trend in the health care system goes towards not only examining the effects but also the costs of interventions and thus osteopathy should pay attention to and deal with the topic. In the beginning this could be limited to the collection of raw data, which could provide quite a huge volume of data if collected by a number of osteopaths and maybe serve as basis for analyses in the future.
Additional Information
Date Accepted
2007
Date Submitted
1.2.2008 00:00:00
Type
osteo_thesis
Language
English
Submitted by:
62
Pub-Identifier
13946
Inst-Identifier
781
Keywords
Economics
Recommended
0
Medium
PerndlMonika.pdf
Item sets
Thesis

Perndl Monika, “Health economic evaluation - An option for osteopathy?”, Osteopathic Research Web, accessed May 16, 2024, https://www.osteopathicresearch.org/s/orw/item/2948