Different attitudes towards estimating indirect costs of disease: The example of cancer.

Abstract

Goal: Cost estimations in healthcare are crucial to make sound and adequate economic evaluations and assessments. The concept of indirect costs' estimation seems to be still not very well developed and systematized. This article is dedicated to the problem of indirect costs estimation of different types of cancer. The main aim of the article is to analyse the frequency of usage of different methods used for estimating indirect costs in economic analysis.

Methods: There are discussed various methods used for indirect costs' estimations. Among them, in details, there are described: human capital approach (HCA), friction cost method (FCM) and health state valuation (HSV). There is included a systematic review of the articles dedicated to the problem of cancer costs'estimation.

Principal findings: Analysing the results of our analysis it turns out that the most frequently used method of estimating indirect costs is the human capital approach (HCA). It makes more than 53% of the analysed studies. The second most frequently used method is the health state valuation (HSV) which constitutes less than 17%.

Practical applications: Calculating indirect costs in the proper way is of a great importance to adequate overall costs' evaluation of disease. It is very important to be aware of different attitudes towards estimating indirect costs of diseases as it may allow for much more accurate assessments which will be beneficial for healthcare systems and proper allocation of limited resources. The deliberations presented in this paper might be very useful for the health technology assessment institutions.