Abstract
Objectives
This paper estimates informal care need using the health of the patient. The results can be used to predict changes in informal care associated with changes in the health of the patient measured using EQ-5D.
Methods
Data was used from a prospective survey of inpatients containing 59,512 complete responses across 44,494 individuals. The number of days a friend or relative has needed to provide care or help with normal activities in the last 6 weeks was estimated using the health of the patient measured by EQ-5D, ICD chapter and other health and sociodemographic data. A variety of different regression models were estimated that are appropriate for the distribution of the informal care dependent variable, which has large spikes at 0 (zero informal care) and 42 days (informal care every day).
Results
The preferred model that most accurately predicts the distribution of the data is the zero-inflated negative binomial with variable inflation. The results indicate that improving the health of the patient reduces informal care need. The relationship between ICD chapter and informal care need is not as clear.
Conclusions
The preferred zero-inflated negative binomial with variable inflation model can be used to predict changes in informal care associated with changes in the health of the patient measured using EQ-5D and these results can be applied to existing datasets to inform economic evaluation. Limitations include recall bias and response bias of the informal care data, and restrictions of the dataset to exclude some patient groups.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE): Guide to the methods of technology appraisal 2013. NICE, London (2013)
Department of Health. Value based pricing: impact assessment (2010). http://www.dhsspsni.gov.uk/value-based_pricing_impact_assessment.pdf. Accessed 12 Aug 2015
Krol, M., Papenburg, J., van Exel, J.: Does Including Informal care in economic evaluations matter? A systematic review of inclusion and impact of informal care in cost-effectiveness studies. PharmacoEconomics 33, 123–135 (2015)
Buckner, L., Yeandle, S.: Valuing carers: calculating the value of carers support. Carers UK, UK (2011)
van den Berg, B., Spauwen, P.: Measurement of informal care: an empirical study into the valid measurement of time spent on informal caregiving. Health Econ. 15, 447–460 (2006)
Weatherly, H., Faria, R., van den Berg, B.: Valuing informal care for economic evaluation. In: Culyer, A. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Health Economics. Elsevier, UK (2014)
Goodrich, K., Kaambwa, B., Al-Janabi, H.: The inclusion of informal care in applied economic evaluation: a review. Value Health 15, 975–981 (2012)
Koopmanschap, M.A., van Exel, J.N., van den Berg, B., Brouwer, W.: An overview of methods and applications to value informal care in economic evaluations of healthcare. PharmacoEconomics 26, 269–280 (2008)
van den Berg, B., Brouwer, W., Koopmanschap, M.A.: Economic valuation of informal care: an overview of methods and applications. Eur J Health Econ 5, 36–45 (2004)
Dolan, P.: Modeling valuations for EuroQol health states. Med. Care 35, 1095–1108 (1997)
Brouwer, W., van Excel, N., can Gorp, B., Redekop, W.: The CarerQol instrument: a new instrument to measure care-related quality of life of informal caregivers for use in economic evaluations. Qual. Life Res. 15, 1005–1021 (2006)
Al-Janabi, H., Flynn, T., Coast, J.: Estimation of a preference-based carer experience scale. Med. Decis. Making 31, 458–468 (2011)
Dixon, S., Walker, M., Salek, S.: Incorporating carer effects into economic evaluation. PharmacoEconomics 24, 43–53 (2006)
Currie, C.J.M., McEwan, P., Peters, J., Patel, T., Dixon, S.: The routine collation of health outcomes data from hospital treated subjects in the Health Outcomes Data Repository (HODaR): descriptive analysis from the first 20,000 subjects. Value Health 8, 581–590 (2005)
Brooks, R.: EuroQol: the current state of play. Health Policy 37, 53–72 (1996)
Cameron, A.C., Trivedi, P.K.: Regression Analysis for Count Data. Econometric Society Monograph, vol. 30. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1998)
Long, J.S., Freese, J.: Regression models for Categorical Dependent Variables Using Stata, 2nd edn. Stata Press, StataCorp LP, Texas (2006)
Wooldridge, J.M.: Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data, 2nd edn. MIT Press, Cambridge (2010)
Brouwer, W.B., van Exel, N.J., van den Berg, B., Dinant, H.J., Koopmanschap, M.A., van den Bos, G.A.: Burden of caregiving: evidence of objective burden, subjective burden, and quality of life impacts on informal caregivers of patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Arthritis Rheum. 51, 570–577 (2004)
Wimo, A., von Strauss, E., Nordberg, G., Sassi, F., Johansson, L.: Time spent on informal and formal care giving for persons with dementia in Sweden. Health Policy 61, 255–268 (2014)
Neubauer, S., Holle, R., Menn, P., Grossfeld-Schmitz, M., Graesel, E.: Measurement of informal care time in a study of patients with dementia. Int. Psychogeriatr. 20, 1160–1176 (2008)
Krol, M., Stolk, E., Brouwer, W.: Predicting productivity based on EQ-5D: an explorative study. Eur. J. Health Econ. 14, 465–475 (2014)
Espallargues, M., Czoski-Murray, C.J., Bansback, N.J., Carlton, J., Lewis, G.M., Hughes, L.A., Brand, C.S., Brazier, J.E.: The impact of age-related macular degeneration on health status utility values. Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci. 46, 4016–4023 (2005)
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Gavin Roberts and Danny Palnoch from the Department of Health for their comments throughout this project. This is an independent study commissioned and funded by the Policy Research Programme in the Department of Health. The study was undertaken by the Policy Research Unit in Economic Evaluation of Health and Care interventions (EEPRU) funded by the Department of Health Policy Research Programme. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Department.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rowen, D., Dixon, S., Hernández-Alava, M. et al. Estimating informal care inputs associated with EQ-5D for use in economic evaluation. Eur J Health Econ 17, 733–744 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-015-0718-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-015-0718-5