The total value of time of children undergoing treatment: A contingent valuation from the perspective of parents in the orthopaedic department of a Dutch hospital

France Portrait*, Marco Hoozemans, Bernard van den Berg

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Aim: Children spend substantial amounts of time receiving medical care (patients' time), and this patients' time plays an important role in parental choices for paediatric care. However, it is usually ignored in economic evaluations. This is a concern because economic evaluations are increasingly being used to inform child health policy decision-making. This study aims to quantify the time children spend receiving medical care and attach a monetary value to it for use in economic evaluations. It applied the parents' perspective. Consequently, the derived money values are the time values for both child and the accompanying parent. Methods: We used the contingent valuation methodology. We collected data on 83 children undergoing orthopaedic treatment in a Dutch hospital. Accompanying parents were asked to quantify and value the patients' time of their children. We separately explored travel, waiting and treatment time. We also checked whether the monetary valuation varied across parents' financial situation, children's health and level of pain. Results: Parents were willing to pay about €33 (confidence interval (CI) 21.2–48.1) for a 1-day reduction in treatment time; about €11.5 (CI 4.2–19.1) for an hour's reduction in waiting time; and about €4.5 (CI 1.5–7.4) for an hour's reduction in travel time. In addition, respondents with better financial conditions have, on average higher, willingness to pays. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first instance that patients' time of children has been monetarily valued. This methodology can be used to further develop economic evaluations of paediatric care and could be applied to larger samples with varying clinical conditions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)539-547
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of Paediatrics and Child Health
Volume55
Issue number5
Early online dateOct 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2019

Funding

This paper has been financed by The Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) (project name: ‘Valuation of patient time’, project number: 152002032). We are also thankful to Linda Hartman and to the four bachelor students who collected the data as part of their bachelor internship. We also thank two reviewers and the editor whose questions have helped us to clarify the main message of our paper.

FundersFunder number
Linda Hartman
ZonMw152002032

    Keywords

    • contingent valuation method
    • cost-effectiveness analysis
    • economic evaluation
    • orthopaedic care
    • paediatric care
    • valuation of patients' time of children

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