Cost-Effectiveness of Early Intervention in Psychosis: A Modeling Study

Programs for early intervention in psychosis have shown clinical efficacy. The authors aimed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of early intervention programs compared with standard care for the treatment of first-episode psychosis in the United States.

A decision-analytic model integrating published data on clinical efficacy, costs, and health utilities was developed to evaluate early intervention versus standard care over the lifetime of patients after their first psychotic episode. Model input data were derived from meta-analyses, clinical trials, and U.S. national data. The main outcomes included hospitalizations, employment rate, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), lifetime health care costs, and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs).

Compared with patients receiving standard care, patients in the early intervention strategy had 3.2 fewer hospitalizations and 2.7 more years of employment over the course of their remaining life expectancy. From a health care perspective, early intervention had an ICER of approximately $51,600 per QALY. From a societal perspective, early intervention saved costs (i.e., yielded greater health benefits and had lower costs compared with standard care). Results were sensitive to the effect of early intervention on suicide, cost of standard care, cost of early intervention, and the effect (relative risk) of early intervention on employment. A scenario analysis that excluded the effect (i.e., hazard ratio) of early intervention on suicide yielded an ICER of approximately $197,000 per QALY.

These results suggest that it is economically beneficial to fund early intervention in psychosis programs in the United States. The findings indicate that early intervention in psychosis saves costs (from the societal perspective) and is cost-effective (health care sector perspective).