Inpatient costs of congenital heart surgery in China: results from the National Centre for Cardiovascular Diseases

How health economic studies can help improve care of patients with congenital heart disease

“…In The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific , He and colleagues report inpatient costs of congenital heart surgery in China. 3 Such data have only been available from high-income countries while data from low-to-middle income countries remained omitted. He et al.’s 3 paper is a strong contribution towards understanding how necessary, life-saving CHD surgery comes with high financial burden.…”

“… 3 Such data have only been available from high-income countries while data from low-to-middle income countries remained omitted. He et al.’s 3 paper is a strong contribution towards understanding how necessary, life-saving CHD surgery comes with high financial burden. Its importance can hardly be disputed as the patient population with CHD will continue to grow in the future, with major consequences on available resources, especially given He et al.’s 3 observation that median total hospitalization costs have been increasing with 4% per year.…”

“…He et al.’s 3 paper is a strong contribution towards understanding how necessary, life-saving CHD surgery comes with high financial burden. Its importance can hardly be disputed as the patient population with CHD will continue to grow in the future, with major consequences on available resources, especially given He et al.’s 3 observation that median total hospitalization costs have been increasing with 4% per year. This is more or less in line with previous European research showing an annual 3.2% increase of hospitalization costs in adults with CHD, even after adjusting for inflation.…”

“…Translating illnesses and how these illnesses are treated into monetary terms is crucial since it is ultimately the language policy makers do understand. Cost-of-illness descriptions, such as He et al., 3 have the power to identify and define current and future healthcare problems, a necessary step towards evidence-based program and policy development to improve clinical quality in a cost-efficient way. Moreover, these are crucial data to enable cost-effectiveness analyses to compare the value for money of different interventions.…”

“…It can be argued that the obtained cost data can be used in Chinese cost-effectiveness analyses, since He et al. 3 included no less than 6568 hospitalizations from all over China (except for 3 out of 34 provinces). 3 Moreover, although cautiousness is strongly advised here, these data might be internationally usable for cost-effectiveness analyses as long as the CHD disease pattern in the target country is similar to the CHD disease pattern as observed in China.…”