Economic evaluation of a patient and carer centred system of longer-term stroke care from a cluster randomised trial (the LoTS care trial)

Materials and methods A pragmatic cluster, randomised, controlled trial compared the system of care against usual care. Randomisation was at the level of stroke service. Participants’ use of health/social care services and informal care were measured by self-complete questionnaires at baseline, 6 and 12 months. From these, we estimated and compared individual-level total costs from health/social care and societal perspectives at 6 months, 12 months and over 1 year. Costs were combined with the primary outcome, psychological health (General Health Questionnaire 12; GHQ12), and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs; based on the EQ-5D) to examine cost-effectiveness at 6 months. Costeffectiveness acceptability curves based on the net benefit approach and bootstrapping techniques were used to estimate the probability of cost-effectiveness.