Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 19, 2025

E-Patient Counseling Trial E-PACO: Computer Based Education versus Nurse Counseling for Patients to Prepare for Colonoscopy
Published on: August 1, 2019
Economic evaluation of a randomised controlled trial - An online bereavement support program for parents following
Emily Callander1, Yanan Hu1, Claudia Bull2
1School of Public Health, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
Background:
Delivering timely, accessible, and cost-effective perinatal bereavement support to parents is essential to support their emotional and mental wellbeing. However, there is limited evidence on the economic impact of online-based support programs.
Objective:
This study conducted a cost-utility analysis of parents who participated in a randomised controlled trial - comparing the Living with Loss program (LWL; eight-week online program for parents following perinatal death) with care-as-usual (CAU), from the perspective of the healthcare system.
Methods:
A health service utilisation survey was designed to collect the hospital and out-of-hospital health services, and prescription medications accessed by participants during the study period. Total costs included costs to the governments and individuals (AUD 2023/24) over time. Utility was measured using quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) calculated based on the Assessment of Quality of Life (AQoL)-8D.
Findings:
Among the 95 randomised parents, 52 (20 LWL, 32 CAU) completed economic assessments at baseline (week 0) and post-program (week 9). Of these 52 participants, 39 (16 LWL, 23 CAU) further completed the three-month follow up assessment (week 21). Compared with CAU, the LWL program showed trends towards costs savings in primary care and maintained similar health outcomes at post-program (-$264.59 per participant, p = 0.47; QALY gained=-0.001, p = 0.9) and three-month follow up (-$531.52 per participant, p = 0.3; QALY gained=-0.002, p = 0.94).
Conclusion:
This study provides preliminary evidence of potential economic benefits of the LWL Program. Future studies with larger sample sizes and adequate power are needed to fully assess the cost-effectiveness of online perinatal bereavement support services.
More Related Videos
07:05Operant Protocols for Assessing the Cost-benefit Analysis During Reinforced Decision Making by Rodents
Published on: September 10, 2018
06:55Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting Propensity Score using the Military Health System Data Repository and National Death Index
Published on: January 8, 2020
Related Concept Videos
Regression Toward the Mean
Types of Biopharmaceutical Studies: Controlled and Non-Controlled Approaches
Non-controlled studies, commonly employed for initial exploration, lack a control group, rendering them susceptible to biases and external influences. In contrast,...
Comparing the Survival Analysis of Two or More Groups
Study Designs in Epidemiology
Observational studies are those where the researcher does not intervene but rather observes natural variations. They include cross-sectional, cohort, and...
Randomized Experiments
Simple randomization
Simple...
Blinding