Objective: Health economic evaluation of a health insurance based case management intervention for persons with mood to severe depressive disorders from payers' perspective. Intervention intended to raise utilization rates of outpatient health services.
Methods: Comparison of patients of one German health insurance company in two different regions/states. Cohort study consists of a control region offering treatment as usual. Patients in the experimental region were exposed to a case management programme guided by health insurance account manager who received trainings, quality circles and supervisions prior to intervention. Utilization rates of ambulatory psychiatrist and/or psychotherapist should be increased. Estimation of incremental cost effectiveness ratio (ICER) was intended.
Results: Intervention yielded benefits for patients at comparable costs. A conservative estimation of the ICER was 44,16 euro. Maximum willingness to pay was 378,82 euro per year. Sensitivity analyses showed that this amount of maximum willingness to pay can be reduced to 34,34 euro per year or 2,86 euro per month due to cost degression effects.
Conclusions: The intervention gains increasing cost effectiveness by the number of included patients and case managers. Cooperation between health insurances is suggested in order to minimize intervention cost and to maximize patient benefits. Results should be confirmed by individual longitudinal data (bottom-up approach) first.