Investigating the Generalizability of Economic Evaluations Conducted in Italy: A Critical Review

Abstract

Despite a quite positive temporal trend, generalizability of results still appears as an unsolved question, even if some indication of improvement within Italian studies has been observed.

Cost transferability problems in economic evaluation as a framework for an European health care and social costs database

“…Results included high heterogeneity in reporting cost estimates, and high variability, underpinned by differences in service provision amongst countries, sources used to derive costs, and the way in which units were defined. Similarly, Ruggeri et al [ 27 ], Gorry et al [ 19 ] and Mandrik et al [ 28 ] highlighted poor costs reporting that makes transferability difficult. Moreover, Ruggery et al [ 27 ] insists on standardizing procedures and having official, independent sources of information for the conduction of economic evaluations.…”

“…Similarly, Ruggeri et al [ 27 ], Gorry et al [ 19 ] and Mandrik et al [ 28 ] highlighted poor costs reporting that makes transferability difficult. Moreover, Ruggery et al [ 27 ] insists on standardizing procedures and having official, independent sources of information for the conduction of economic evaluations.…”

“…Some studies [19,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] have addressed the cost transferability of economic evaluation analyses from the original setting to a target country by adjusting the unit costs. Most of them highlight the difficulty of the intended adjustment of cost data due to the poor quality and lack of transparence of the results reported.…”

About the Reliability of the Critical Review to Investigate the Generalizability of Economic Evaluations Conducted in Italy

“…We read with interest the review by Ruggeri et al [1] on the generalizability of economic evaluations conducted in Italy. It is crucial for a critical review to be also systematic and complete.…”

Towards a New System for the Assessment of the Quality in Care Pathways: An Overview of Systematic Reviews

“…The core characteristics of pathways include many aspects: an explicit statement of goals, a multidisciplinary team of clinicians and managers, facilitation of communication and coordination of roles, the need to be built on evidence-based best practice, and patient/relative involvement and expectations. CP involves operational research and methodologies, with the use of documentation, dataset, and transparent and standardized quality assessment [10,11]; collaboration with the general practitioner and follow-up; and its impact on the organization of clinical processes and outcomes [12,13]. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of CPs cannot be generalized because of the insufficient number of controlled studies and because of confounding factors and sources of contamination affecting the validity of the outcomes [5].…”