So a big part of our conversation with David Lee (one of GE’s health economists) last week was talk about QALYs:
QALY: Quality adjusted life year, a year of life adjusted for its quality or its value. A year in perfect health is considered equal to 1.0 QALY. The value of a year in ill health would be discounted. For example, a year bedridden might have a value equal to 0.5 QALY.
Much of David’s work is in this realm, as he explained:
We try and evaluate benefits and costs. The way we measure that is a QALY, quality adjusted life year, we try to figure out what the QALY for certain technologies are. Is the gain in QALYs to the gain in costs worth it. The UK has something like £30,000 per QALY. If the technology can deliver at less than that they’ll pay for it, if it’s more than that they won’t. … What it’s telling technology developers is that if you’ve got a high cost with low medical benefit product your chances of getting into market are lower. If you’re a cancer patient that stands to benefit from an additional three months of life that will cost the NHS $70k is it worth it or not?
This is especially interesting to me because it’s puts a value on human life. In some cases it’s going to be decided that the treatment isn’t worth the cost and while that’s a tough decision to make, it’s an understandable one (at least from an outsider rational standpoint … imagine it’s a different story if you’re the one who wants the treatment). Basically there has to be some way to measure this stuff otherwise it would all spiral out of control. Anyway, lots to think about.
I’ll continue digging into our chat with David over the coming days, going to try to break it down into bite-sized chunks.