BACKGROUND Postvention services aim to ameliorate distress and reduce future incidences of suicide. The StandBy Response Service is one such service operating in Australia for those bereaved through suicide. Few previous studies have reported estimates or evaluations of the economic impact and outcomes associated with the implementation of bereavement/grief interventions. AIMS To estimate the...

BACKGROUND Ivabradine is a heart rate-lowering agent approved to reduce the risk of hospitalization for worsening heart failure. This study assessed the cost-effectiveness of adding ivabradine to background therapy in the United States from the perspective of a commercial or Medicare Advantage payer. METHODS AND RESULTS A cost-effectiveness, cohort-based Markov model using a state transition ...

BACKGROUND Simvastatin therapy for patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) has been shown to be safe and associated with minimal adverse effects, but it does not improve clinical outcomes. The aim of this research was to report on mortality and cost-effectiveness of simvastatin in patients with ARDS at 12 months. METHODS This was a cost-utility analysis alongside a multicentr...

OBJECTIVE To examine the cost-effectiveness of fluoride varnish application by medical providers when implemented within a well-child periodicity schedule for Medicaid-enrolled children. DESIGN Cost-effectiveness was analyzed using published probabilities and costs. Input parameters included the effectiveness of fluoride varnish (35.4%) applied according to the well-child periodicity schedule...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of treatment with intramuscular (IM) methotrexate compared with fallopian tube-sparing laparoscopy for small unruptured ectopic pregnancy. METHODS A decision-analytic model accounting for varying resolution rates, complication rates, and cost estimates was built to compare the use of methotrexate with laparoscopy. Meta-analysis results of studies i...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to evaluate diabetes control, as measured by hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) improvements among African American and Hispanic patients receiving conventional clinical treatment combined with a bilingual diabetes educator using culturally and linguistically appropriate educational materials. This study also sought to estimate the healthcare cost savings resulting ...

BACKGROUND Appropriate diagnostic testing involves considerations of cost-effectiveness. We examined the cost-effectiveness of individual tests in a panel of tests defined by the Japan Society of Clinical Pathology. METHODS We studied 540 new, symptomatic primary care outpatients with a set of 30 common diagnostic tests [the Essential Laboratory Tests (2); ELT(2) panel] for clinical evaluatio...

BACKGROUND Lifestyle interventions affect patients' risk factors for metabolic syndrome (MeSy), a pre-stage to cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and related complications. An effective lifestyle intervention is the Swedish Björknäs intervention, a 3-year randomized controlled trial in primary care for MeSy patients. To include future disease-related cost and health consequences in a cost-effect...

BACKGROUND The United States is aiming to achieve nationwide adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) but lacks robust empirical evidence to anticipate the effect on health care costs. OBJECTIVE To assess short-term cost savings from community-wide adoption of ambulatory EHRs. DESIGN Longitudinal trial with parallel control group. SETTING Natural experiment in which 806 ambulatory cli...

BACKGROUND Smoking cessation has major immediate and long-term health benefits. However, ex-smokers' total lifetime health costs and continuing smokers' costs remain uncompared, and hence the economic savings of smoking cessation to society have not been determined. METHODS The economic effects of smoking cessation in a lifetime perspective have been examined by comparing the health costs of ...