Are preferences over health states informed?

Area of Science:

• Health Economics
• Decision Analysis
• Public Health

Background:

• Preference-elicitation tasks are used to value health states, but the informed nature of these preferences is often unknown.
• Uninformed preferences, stemming from limited experience with illness, can lead to inefficient allocation of healthcare resources.
• A novel method was piloted to assess if public preferences for health states are informed.

Purpose of the Study:

• To pilot a novel method for assessing whether public preferences for health states are informed.
• To compare public expectations of ill health consequences with patient experiences.

Main Methods:

• Defined 'informed' as public expectations aligning with patient experiences across five life domains: activities, enjoyment, independence, relationships, and burden.
• Collected data from 62 members of the public on their expectations of ill health.
• Utilized a secondary dataset to capture patient experiences of the same consequences.

Main Results:

• Significant discrepancies were found between public expectations and patient experiences regarding the impact of ill health.
• The public underestimated the impact of problems in usual activities compared to mobility issues.
• Mental health issues like anxiety and depression were underestimated in their effect on enjoyment and relationships compared to physical problems.

Conclusions:

• This proof-of-concept study successfully demonstrated a method to test for informed preferences in health state valuation.
• Findings suggest that public preferences in this sample are not fully informed, necessitating further research.
• Informed preferences are crucial for effective public resource allocation in healthcare.