Background: There is limited evidence of the cost-effectiveness of chronic disease management plans (CDMPs) funded by the Australian government in the long-term after stroke.
Aims: To estimate the potential cost-effectiveness of CDMPs over a lifetime in people who survived the first 6 months after stroke/TIA.
Methods: A Markov model was developed to simulate costs and benefits of CDMPs over a time horizon of 30 years. Three health states were modelled (stable, hospitalised, dead) with one-year cycles. Model inputs were obtained from studies that included community-dwelling survivors of stroke/TIA. Transition probabilities and costs of resource utilisation from an Australian government funded health system perspective were obtained from the PRECISE study, a data linkage of the Australian Stroke Clinical Registry (cohort n=12,368) with government administrative datasets (hospital, Medicare claims, and pharmaceutical claims data). Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), according to receipt of CDMP claims, were obtained from a cohort of survivors of stroke/TIA from a complementary randomised controlled trial (STANDFIRM, n=563 linked with Medicare claims and death data). A 3% discount rate was applied to costs in Australian dollars ($) and QALYs beyond 12 months. Probabilistic sensitivity analyses, with 10,000 iterations, were used to describe uncertainty around the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER).
Results: Compared to not having a CDMP claim, estimated average total lifetime costs ($124,752 vs. $89,080 per patient) and average total QALYs (7.241 vs. 6.835 per patient) were greater in the CDMP claim group, resulting in an ICER of $87,739 per QALY gained. Assuming a willingness-to-pay threshold of $50,000/QALY gained, there was a 42.41% probability of CDMPs being cost-effective.
Conclusion: It did not appear that the current use of CDMPs was cost-effective for survivors of stroke/TIA compared to care provided in general practices without a CDMP. Further research to optimise the use of CDMPs for this cohort is warranted.