Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Objective: Walk With Ease (WWE) is an effective low-cost walking program. We estimated the budget impact of implementing WWE in persons with knee osteoarthritis (OA) as a measure of affordability that can inform payers' funding decisions. Methods: We estimated changes in two-year healthcare costs with and without WWE. We used the Osteoarthritis Policy (OAPol) Model to estimate per-person medical expenditures. We estimated total and per-member-per-month (PMPM) costs of funding WWE for a hypothetical insurance plan with 75,000 members under two conditions: 1) all individuals aged 45+ with knee OA eligible for WWE, and 2) inactive and insufficiently active individuals aged 45+ with knee OA eligible. In sensitivity analyses, we varied WWE cost and efficacy and considered productivity costs. Results: With eligibility unrestricted by activity level, implementing WWE results in an additional $1,002,408 to the insurance plan over two years ($0.56 PMPM). With eligibility restricted to inactive and insufficiently active individuals, funding WWE results in an additional $571,931 over two years ($0.32 PMPM). In sensitivity analyses, when per-person costs of $10 to $1000 were added with 10-50% decreases in failure rate (enhanced sustainability of WWE benefits), two-year budget impact varied from $242,684 to $6,985,674 with unrestricted eligibility and from -$43,194 (cost-saving) to $4,484,122 with restricted eligibility. Conclusion: Along with the cost-effectiveness of WWE at widely accepted willingness-to-pay thresholds, these results can inform payers in deciding to fund WWE. In the absence of accepted thresholds to define affordability, these results can assist in comparing the affordability of WWE with other behavioral interventions.
Institutions: Brigham and Women's Hospital, Pivot, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Durham VA Health Care System, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, Wake Forest University, The University of Sydney, Royal North Shore Hospital, Harvard University, Boston University
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,400
Awards: ADVANCING ARTHRITIS PUBLIC HEALTH APPROACHES THROUGH NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS: EXPANDING AND SUSTAINING THE DISSEMINATION AND DELIVERY OF AAEBIS, G3776944548, G513288951, G8151124519, Optimizing the value of pain management in knee OA patients with comorbidities, VERITY: Value and Evidence in Rheumatology using bioInformaTics, and advanced analYtics
OpenAlex ID: W4392946512