Author: Sophie Vandepitte, Koen Putman, Nele Van Den Noortgate, Nick Verhaeghe, Lieven Annemans

Publication Date: February 3, 2020

Description:

Objectives: To evaluate cost-effectiveness of an in-home respite care program in addition to standard community-based dementia care to support informal caregivers of persons with dementia compared with standard community-based dementia care. 

Methods: An age-dependent decision-analytic Markov model was applied from a third-party payer and a societal perspective projecting results of a quasi-experimental study over a time horizon of 5 years assuming a repetition of the program every 6 months. Additionally, to deal with uncertainty and to test robustness of the model scenario, one-way and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were conducted. 

Conclusion: This cost-effectiveness analysis suggests that an in-home respite care program in addition to standard community-based dementia care is a cost-effective approach compared with standard community-based dementia care only. These findings provide more insight into the value of such services for the patient, the caregiver, and for society.

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Keywords: cost-effectiveness, dementia, informal care, in-home respite care