June Chau

Air Pollution: Costs and Paths to a Solution in Hong Kong—Understanding the Connections Among Visibility, Air Pollution, and Health Costs in Pursuit of Accountability, Environmental Justice, and Health Protection

Air quality has deteriorated in Hong Kong over more than 15 yr. As part of a program of public accountability, photographs on Poor and Better visibility days were used as representations of the relationships among visibility, air pollution, adverse health effects, and community costs for health care and lost productivity. Coefficients from time-series models and gazetted costs were used to estimate the health and economic impacts of different levels of pollution. In this population of 6.9 million, air quality improvement from the annual average to the lowest pollutant levels of Better visibility days, comparable to the World Health Organization air quality guidelines, would avoid 1335 deaths, 60,587 hospital bed days, and 6.7 million doctor visits for respiratory complaints each year. Direct costs and productivity losses avoided would be over US

Cost-analysis of XELOX and FOLFOX4 for treatment of colorectal cancer to assist decision-making on reimbursement

240 million a year. The dissemination of these findings led to increased demands for pollution controls from the public and legislators, but denials of the need for urgent action arose from the government. The outcome demonstrates the need for more effective translation of the scientific evidence base into risk communication and public policy.

Cost-effectiveness of a health-social partnership transitional program for post-discharge medical patients

BackgroundXELOX (capecitabine + oxaliplatin) and FOLFOX 4 (5-FU + folinic acid + oxaliplatin) have shown similar improvements in survival in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (MCRC). A US cost-minimization study found that the two regimens had similar costs from a healthcare provider perspective but XELOX had lower costs than FOLFOX4 from a societal perspective, while a Japanese cost-effectiveness study found XELOX had superior cost-effectiveness. This study compared the costs of XELOX and FOLFOX4 in patients with MCRC recently treated in two oncology departments in Hong Kong.MethodsCost data were collected from the medical records of 60 consecutive patients (30 received XELOX and 30 FOLFOX4) from two hospitals. Drug costs, outpatient visits, hospital days and investigations were recorded and expressed as cost per patient from the healthcare provider perspective. Estimated travel and time costs were included in a societal perspective analysis. All costs were classed as either scheduled (associated with planned chemotherapy and follow-up) or unscheduled (unplanned visits or admissions and associated tests and medicines). Costs were based on government and hospital sources and expressed in US dollars (US

Systematic review on the cost-effectiveness of self-management education programme for Type 2 diabetes mellitus

).ResultsXELOX patients received an average of 7.3 chemotherapy cycles (of the 8 planned cycles) and FOLFOX4 patients received 9.2 cycles (of the 12 planned cycles). The scheduled cost per patient per cycle was

Economic evaluation of the differential benefits of home visits with telephone calls and telephone calls only in transitional discharge support

2,046 for XELOX and

Community end-of-life care among Chinese older adults living in nursing homes

2,152 for FOLFOX4, while the unscheduled cost was

Cost-effectiveness of a transitional home-based palliative care program for patients with end-stage heart failure

240 and

Five‐year cost‐effectiveness of the Patient Empowerment Programme (PEP) for type 2 diabetes mellitus in primary care

421, respectively. Total treatment cost per patient was

Health impact assessment of marine emissions in Pearl River Delta region.

16,609 for XELOX and

Long-term cost-effectiveness of a Patient Empowerment Programme for type 2 diabetes mellitus in primary care

23,672 for FOLFOX4; the total cost for FOLFOX4 was 37% greater than that of XELOX. The addition of the societal costs increased the total treatment cost per patient to