Radiography on wheels arrives to nursing homes – an economic assessment of a new health care technology in southern Sweden

Abstract

Mobile radiography can be used to examine patients in nursing homes at a lower cost than hospital-based radiography. Patients benefit from not having to transfer to a hospital for radiography, resulting in reduced anxiety for patients.

Economic methods used in health technology assessment

“…Nine studies were randomized controlled trials (Ashby et al, 2014;Downing et al, 2015;Harron et al, 2016;Lall et al, 2015;Murray et al, 2014;Rosenthal et al, 2015;Smulders et al, 2016;Walter et al, 2015), usually comparing clinical benefi ts and cost-effectiveness of the traditional device with a new developed one, one study was a prospective study (Dozet et al, 2016), using a cost-minimization analysis for societal impact reasons, and one was a survey (Heintz et al, 2016), conducted among 33 European countries, which are involved in the European Network for Health Technology Assessment. The aim of this survey was to provide a general framework for economic evaluation at a European level.…”

“…Downing et al, 2015;Dozet et al, 2016;Heintz et al, 2016;Rosenthal et al, 2015), the cost-minimization analysis (cf. Dozet et al, 2016;Heintz et al, 2016), and the costconsequence analysis (cf. Heintz et al, 2016).…”

“…The economic evaluation (EE) is a comparison of the costs and consequences of at least two choices (Drummond et al, 2005). With respect to new health technologies, EE compares the new health technology against the current standard-of-care treatment (Gavurova & Soltes, 2016;Gavurova & Vagasova, 2016).…”

Mobil røntgentjeneste ved sykehjem

“…A recently published prospective comparative study from southern Sweden also documents lower costs (17). However, the finances are complicated by the fact that the mobile X-ray service lies in the borderline territory between the spheres of responsibility of the municipal and the specialist health services.…”

Nyttig med røntgen på sykehjem

“…Nursing home doctors will benefit from the diagnostic aid provided by X-rays, and it is self-evident that society as a whole will benefit through patients not being sent unnecessarily to hospital. Swedish colleagues have also shown recently that it can result in less anxiety for patients (8). The question is thus not whether a mobile X-ray service is a useful option for nursing home patients; the question is who is to pick up the tab -the municipality or the specialist health service?…”