L R Correia, J C Martins, E T Rother, P C de Soárez
{"title":"Measuring impacts: a scoping review of healthcare impact evaluations.","authors":"L R Correia, J C Martins, E T Rother, P C de Soárez","doi":"10.1186/s12961-025-01324-w","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>With the increasing use of the term \"impact evaluation\" in healthcare and the absence of an exhaustive review on this general theme, this research aims to map available evidence and methods associated with impact evaluations in healthcare by conducting a scoping review.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This exhaustive review included peer-reviewed studies of healthcare interventions with no restrictions on language or time of publication.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>In total, 324 studies met the inclusion criteria from 4372 single registries retrieved from Medline, Embase, Scopus, WoS and Econlit in August 2024, with no time restriction. Only ex-post studies were identified; as expected from guidelines, most studies used counterfactuals (58%) and only 7% did not use any comparison. Furthermore, natural experiments or quasi-experiments were the most applied designs (37%), followed by observational (26%) and experimental (17%) designs.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Impact evaluations of healthcare interventions seem to be predominantly associated with methods of strong comparison (counterfactuals) designs as seen in guidelines; however, there are exceptions.</p>","PeriodicalId":12870,"journal":{"name":"Health Research Policy and Systems","volume":"23 1","pages":"113"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12424203/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Health Research Policy and Systems","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-025-01324-w","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HEALTH POLICY & SERVICES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: With the increasing use of the term "impact evaluation" in healthcare and the absence of an exhaustive review on this general theme, this research aims to map available evidence and methods associated with impact evaluations in healthcare by conducting a scoping review.
Methods: This exhaustive review included peer-reviewed studies of healthcare interventions with no restrictions on language or time of publication.
Results: In total, 324 studies met the inclusion criteria from 4372 single registries retrieved from Medline, Embase, Scopus, WoS and Econlit in August 2024, with no time restriction. Only ex-post studies were identified; as expected from guidelines, most studies used counterfactuals (58%) and only 7% did not use any comparison. Furthermore, natural experiments or quasi-experiments were the most applied designs (37%), followed by observational (26%) and experimental (17%) designs.
Conclusions: Impact evaluations of healthcare interventions seem to be predominantly associated with methods of strong comparison (counterfactuals) designs as seen in guidelines; however, there are exceptions.
期刊介绍:
Health Research Policy and Systems is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal that aims to provide a platform for the global research community to share their views, findings, insights and successes. Health Research Policy and Systems considers manuscripts that investigate the role of evidence-based health policy and health research systems in ensuring the efficient utilization and application of knowledge to improve health and health equity, especially in developing countries. Research is the foundation for improvements in public health. The problem is that people involved in different areas of research, together with managers and administrators in charge of research entities, do not communicate sufficiently with each other.