Assessing the value of screening tools: reviewing the challenges and opportunities of cost-effectiveness analysis.

Conclusions: To capture all important costs and outcomes of a screening tool, screening pathways should be modeled including patient treatment. Also, false positive and false negative patients are likely to have important costs and consequences and should be included in the analysis. As these patients are difficult to identify in regular data sources, common treatment patterns should be used to determine how these patients are likely to be treated. It is important that assumptions are clearly indicated and that the consequences of these assumptions are tested in sensitivity analyses, particularly the assumptions of independence of consecutive tests and the level of patient and provider compliance to guidelines and sojourn times. As data is rarely available regarding the progression of undiagnosed patients, extrapolation from diagnosed patients may be necessary. PMID: 30009081 [PubMed]
Source: Public Health Reviews - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Tags: Public Health Rev Source Type: research