Health Economics: news

November 2015

• Beth Parkinson has joined the Centre as a Research Associate to work on an MRC-funded scoping review of the use of incentives to improve recruitment and retention in clinical trials. She will be working with Matt Sutton, Eleonora Fichera and Rachel Meacock from MCHE, along with Pete Bower from the Centre for Primary Care. Beth joins us from the MSc Economics programme at The University of Manchester, where she gained a distinction overall and received an award for outstanding achievement.

October 2015

• The findings from the Eighth National GP Worklife Survey Report are discussed in a recent Blog article by Kath Checkland (Professor of Health Policy and Primary Care). The article can be read on the Primary Care Blog. The full report is also available to read.

September 2015

• Congrats to our PhD student Julius Ohrnberger who secured the Widening Participation Fellowship. The Widening Participation is the University’s programme to socially engage and outreach to local schools in less affluent areas in and around Manchester. Fellows of the WP teach their subjects and offer workshops at these schools to spark an interest in the pupils ,from primary through sixths formers, for research and academia.”

August 2015

• Rachel Meacock, Eleonora Fichera, Matt Sutton and Peter Bower (Centre for Primary Care) have been awarded a grant from the MRC Network of Hubs for Trials Methodology Research. They will be exploring the design and use of incentives for recruitment and retention in clinical trials.
• Congratulations to our researcher Julius for securing the President’s Doctoral Scholar Award (PDS) of the University of Manchester for his PhD commencing in October this year at MCHE. The PDS is the flagship funding scheme of the University of Manchester to support research training and aims at training tomorrow’s global research leaders. Julius will investigate in his PhD the “The relation between physical and mental health in developing countries – understanding the causal pathways through poverty alleviation programmes”. The PhD is supervised by Matt Sutton, Eleonora Fichera (MCHE), and Ralitza Dimova (Institute for Development Policy and Management). Steve Birch (McMaster; MCHE) is part of the team as advisor.”

July 2015

• The paper entitled "What are the Costs and Benefits of Providing Comprehensive Seven-day Services for Emergency Hospital Admissions?" published in Health Economics by Rachel Meacock, Tim Doran (University of York) and Matt Sutton has become the most tweeted paper from this journal (889 tweets). It has been picked up by parliament as well as several mainstream news outlets and blogs. This has prompted a healthy debate on the issues of seven-day services and opportunity costs in healthcare more generally. This level of debate is great for our discipline.
• The Manchester centre for health Economics is involved with a newly established Molecular Pathology Node based in Manchester. To support molecular pathology, the MRC and EPSRC have supported six nodes led by the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leicester, Manchester, Newcastle and Nottingham. Under the supervision of Prof Katherine Payne MCHE will have a full time researcher working with the molecular pathology node to create a new programme of work that will evaluate the economic impact of approaches to stratified medicine. More details on the MRC website.

June 2015

• The School of Dentistry, in collaboration Brenda Gannon, invites applications for a funded PhD investigating the demand and supply side economics of dental care for older adults. Applications can be made online: dental PhD applications

April 2015

• Katherine Payne presented at the St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver as part of the Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences (CHÉOS) seminar series. An audio recording of the seminar entitled "Valuing the Economic Benefits of Complex Interventions: When Maximizing Health is Not Sufficient" has been made available online: Katherine Payne CHÉOS audio

March 2015

• Eleonora Fichera presented the paper entitled “Does treatment "intensity" affect health behaviours? The Double Moral Hazard problem revisited” (co-authored with Richard Emsley and Matt Sutton) at the 6^th Australasian Workshop on Econometrics and Health Economics (8-10 April 2015 - Melbourne, Australia). This workshop provides a forum for the development and dissemination of applications of econometrics and other quantitative approaches in health economics.

February 2015

• Ian Jacob will be part of the new National Family Drug and Alcohol Courts Development Unit. More in the University of Manchester press release.

January 2015

• Stephen Birch will give the 29th Annual Health Services Research Lecture at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on the 3rd March. The title will be "HEALTH CARE WORKFORCE PLANNING:CAN WE EVER GET IT RIGHT?" and promises to be an engaging talk.

• The Manchester Centre for Health Economics has 6 papers presented at the Leeds HESG
  • Non-payment for Performance: Financial Penalties for Readmissions in England. Søren Rud Kristensen, Matt Sutton
  • Cognitive Impairment and Healthcare Utilisation Amongst the Ageing Population: An analysis of SHARE data. Brenda Gannon, James Banks, James Nazroo, Luke Munford
  • How should we allocate budgets for public health to local areas? Thomas Mason, Matt Sutton, William Whittaker
  • Understanding how to estimate the cost of long term conditions in children: the example of juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Wendy Gidman, Ian Jacob, Linda Davies, Julie Ratcliffe, Roberto Carrasco, Kimme Hyrich, Deborah Symmons
  • Substitutes or Complements? Formal and co-residential informal care amongst individuals whose daily activities are limited. Sean Urwin, Thomas Mason, Yiu-Shing Lau, Matthew Sutton
  • The wider effects of cancer screening programmes on healthcare utilization and health behaviours. Jack Higgins, Rachel Meacock, Matt Sutton

Decemeber 2014

• The Manchester Centre for Health Economics is to play a major role in researching the impact of musculoskeletal disorders on people’s ability to work. The research will be joint with colleagues at the University’s Centre for Musculoskeletal Research and at the University of Southampton.

October 2014

• Caroline Vass was awarded the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) 2014 Lee Lusted Award for her posted presenting some of her PhD work. Each year the Lee B. Lusted Prize Student Fund recognizes students' original research in medical decision making in order to attract the best and brightest young minds to SMDM. The prize provides a cash award to be given to the top two scoring finalists in each category, for a total of four awards to be presented. Recipients are chosen at the Annual Meeting. Caroline was awarded a prize in the preferences section.

• Elizabeth Camacho has been awarded a Faculty Stepping Stones Fellowship. These fellowships aim to provide the underpinning resource, and security, from which to launch successful external fellowship application within 2 years of the award. Elizabeth will use the fellowship to gain additional funding for evidence synthesis techniques to develop a well-designed, cost-effective complex intervention for women with postnatal depression in the UK.

September 2014

• Three new National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) research methods fellows have started at the Centre:

  • Phil Britteon graduated with a BEconSci from the University of Manchester in 2014. He was previously an Intern with us in summer 2013, under the NIHR Research Methods Fellowships and Internships scheme. Phil will be working with Matt Sutton and with Jo Dumville and Nicky Cullum from the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work on surgical and non-surgical wounds. For the first year of his Fellowship, Phil will be undertaking the MSc Economics of Health at the University of Manchester.

  • Zac Craig graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Economics from the University of Lancaster in 2014. Zac will be working with Brenda Gannon, Centre for Health Economics, and with Ian Bruce, Director of the NIHR Manchester Wellcome Trust CRF and Research Theme Lead for Connective Tissue Disease in the NIHR Manchester Musculoskeletal BRU, on cost models for SLE (systemic lupus erythematosus). For the first year of his Fellowship, Zac will be undertaking the MSc Economics of Health at the University of Manchester.

  • Niall Davison graduated with a BA (Hons) in Economics and Social Studies from The University of Manchester in 2014. Niall will be working with Katherine Payne, Manchester Centre for Health Economics, and with Graeme Black, Professor and Honorary Consultant in Genetics and Ophthalmology on developing decision analytic modelling techniques suitable for the economic evaluation of diagnostic technologies. For the first year of his Fellowship, Niall will be undertaking the MSc in Health Economics and Decision Modelling at the University of Sheffield.

• Sean Gavan will represent the Manchester Centre for Health Economics at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Musculoskeletal Biomedical Research Units' Joint Trainees Meeting on 26th September. Sean will present on the role of economic evaluation in stratifying treatments for rheumatoid arthritis, based on research towards his PhD thesis.
   
• The Manchester Centre for Health Economics was proud to host the first European Health Economics Association (EuHEA) PhD Student-supervisor and Early Career Researcher (ECR) conference from 1st-3rd September 2014. Details of future conferences can be found on the EuHEA website.

July 2014

• The iHEA 10th World Congress will be held in Dublin on 13th-16th July 2014. The Manchester Centre for Health Economics is making the following contributions:
  • Econometrics of Ageing and Longevity: Prediciting Health. An organised session by Brenda Gannon
  • Identifying inequalities in health - implications for policy. An organised session by Will Whittaker
  • Using linked datasets to estimate the causal effect of physical activity on health. Gannon, B., Hall, A. & Munford, L.
  • Weekend effect on the receipt of quality of care for emergency hospital admissions. Lau, Y., Sutton, M. & Doran, T.
  • Non-payment for performance: Financial penalties for readmissions in England. Kristensen, S. & Sutton, M.
  • Willingness to pay for cancer screening in Thailand. Saegnow, U. & Birch, S.
  • On the margins of health economics: searchers, surveyors and the monetary value of a QALY. Birch, S. & Gafni, A.
  • An analysis into the impacts of the removal of the health inequalities factor for local budget allocations in England. Whittaker, W. & Sutton, M..

June 2014

• The Manchester Centre for Health Economics has the following papers accepted at the Health Economists' Study Group held at Glasgow Caledonian University:
  • Weekend effect on the receipt of quality of care for emergency hospital admissions. Yiu-Shing Lau, Matt Sutton, Tim Doran
  • Estimating the wider societal benefit of changes in health. William Whittaker, Matthew Sutton
  • Does Pay-for-Perfromance affect the job satisfaction of general practitioners? Thomas Allen, Will Whittaker, Matt Sutton
  • Economic evaluation of the transfer of services from hospitals to the community: an application to an enhanced eye care service. Cheryl Jones, Matt Sutton,
    David Edgar, Robert Harper, Stephen Birch, Evgenia Konstantakopoulou, John Lawreson
  • Efficiency of Threshold-Based Payment Schemes: The Importance of uncertainty about the Effort-Performance Relationship. Anne Sophie Oxholm, Søren Rud Kristensen, Matt Sutton
  • Using survival analysis on administrative datasets to improve estimates of life expectancy gains in policy studies. Mark Harrison, Rachel Meacock, Matt Sutton
• The Centre has fours papers being presented at the Nordic Health Economists’ Study Group annual conference in Reykjavik (Iceland) 20th-22nd August 2014:
  • Does accreditation of hospitals improve quality of care? Evidence from mandatory implementation in Denmark. Mickael Bech, Søren Rud Kristensen
  • Developing a new incentive scheme to replace activity-based reimbursement in Denmark: Process, outcome and expected effects. Rikke Søgaard, Søren Rud Kristensen, Mickael Bech
  • Efficiency of Threshold-Based Payment Schemes: The Importance of uncertainty about the Effort-Performance Relationship. Anne Sophie Oxholm, Søren Rud Kristensen, Matt Sutton
  • Non-payment for performance: Financial penalties for readmissions in England. Søren Rud Kristensen and Matt Sutton
• The paper “Pay for Performance, Contractual choice and matching. The case of General Practitioners in England” jointly authored by Eleonora Fichera and Mario Pezzino has been accepted for presentation at: the Nordic Health Economists’ Study Group annual conference in Reykjavik (Iceland) 20th-22nd August 2014; and the European Association for Research in Industrial Economics annual conference in Milan (Italy) 29th-30th August 2014.

• Søren Rud Kristensen and Matt Sutton presented at the 3^rd Annual Healthcare Markets Conference (May 15-16, 2014) at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. The paper presented was Non-payment for performance: Financial penalties for readmissions in England. Søren Rud Kristensen and Matt Sutton

• The Centre will have two posters presented by Rachel Meacock at the Academy Health Annual Research Meeting in San Diego, June 2014.

  • Adoption of HQID in England was cost-effective in the short-term. Meacock R, Kristensen S, Sutton M.
  • The long-term effect of hospital pay for performance on mortality in England. Kristensen S, Meacock R, Turner A, Boaden R, McDonald R, Roland M, Sutton M.

May 2014

• Eleonora Fichera will contribute to the 15^th European Health Economics Workshop (EHEW) in Lausanne (27-28 June) with the paper “Health behaviours and the patient-doctor interaction: The double moral hazard problem” (with James Banks and Matt Sutton). EHEW  brings together researchers from around the world working in the field of Health Economics. The 15th EHEW continues the tradition of providing a forum that encourages the development, critical appraisal and dissemination of methodological research related to the health domain.

• Brenda Gannon has been invited to join the iHEA (International Health Economics Association) Strategic planning ‘ Scope and Scientific Excellence’ committee.

April 2014

• The Institute of Population Health held the first annual Postgraduate Student Showcase on the 8th April. The Manchester Centre for Health economics was well represented at the event with posters by Alex Turner, Alexander Thompson and Thomas Allen and a presentation by Rachel Meacock. The award for best posted was jointly awarded to Alex Turner and Thomas Allen.

March 2014

• Rachel Meacock has been appointed as an Associate Member of the NIHR HS&DR (Researcher-led) Board. Rachel will act as Deputy to Prof Matt Sutton in his role as a board member, advising on the suitability of applications for funding through the NIHR HS&DR Programme.

• Mark Harrison attended the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis conference - Risk, Perception, and Response and presented Does Introducing Imprecision around Risk and Benefit Estimates Influence the Way People Value Treatments? with co-authors from the University of British Columbia - Nick Bansback & Carlo Marra.

• We are currently advertising a PhD studentship on the links between mental and physical health jointly supervised by Prof. Matt Sutton, Prof. Karina Lovell and Dr. Eleonora Fichera. More information

February 2014

• Two papers from the Manchester Centre for Health Economics will be presented at this year's Royal Economics Society conference held in Manchester.
  • Health Behaviours and Patients-Doctors Interaction: The Double Moral Hazard Problem. J. Banks, E. Fichera and M. Sutton
  • Targets for maximum waiting times and patient prioritization: evidence from England. S. Nikolova, A. Sinko, M. Sutton
• Brenda Gannon has been awarded several grants to pursue health economics research in collaboration with other researchers at Manchester and overseas.
  • Australian Research Council Discovery Award: for research on ‘Threshold Models in Micro-econometrics with applications to empirical models of health’. The project is collaborative work with the Principal Investigator Prof. Mark Harris, Curtin University, Perth and co-investigator Prof. David Harris, University of Melborne. Brenda has also been awarded a Curtin Business School visiting fellowship
  • MICRA (Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing) and UMRI funding: Brenda Gannon (PI),  Prof. James Banks, Economics (Co-I) and Prof. James Nazroo, Sociology (Co-I) have won two seed fund awards to study cognitive decline, decision making and health care utilization, using data from the UK, US and Europe.
  • ESRC Transformative Research: Brenda Gannon (PI) and Prof. Alastair Hall, Economics (Co-I) have won seed funding from the ESRC Transformative Research competition, to analysis the causal relationship between physical activity and health, using linked datasets from individual level micro and local area level data.

January 2014

• The Manchester Centre for Health Economics is pleased to announce that it will be hosting the first European Health Economics Association (EuHEA). PhD Student-Supervisor and Early Career Researcher (ECR) Conference from the 1st-3rd September 2014. See conference page for further details.

• Research by Alexander Thompson et al on the cost effectiveness of a pharmacogenetic test has been mention in a press release by ISPOR

November 2013

• The Manchester Centre for Health Economics recently held a successful launch event to celebrate the growth of health economincs at Manchester and to showcase the diversity of research that we undertake. The turn out was great and we hope everyone who attended enjoyed the discussions. A link to the launch brochure is below. It contains details of the launch event and also information about the health economic team members. Please contact us if you have any questions or queries about our work.
  • Launch Brochure (pdf, 1,122KB)
• The Centre will have 4 research papers and 1 poster presented at the Winter 2014 Health Economists' Study Group at The University of Sheffield. Abstracts of these papers are avaliable to view and download: Paper abstracts (pdf, 79KB)
• Harry Hill recently joined the Manchester Centre for Health Economics. Harry attained a PhD in Economics at the University of Sheffield on the topic of “Evaluating the economic impact of Agenda for Change”. He then moved to work at the Institute of Health and Society researching the effect of centralising emergency health care services. At the Centre he is investigating the productive efficiency of dental practices and the optimal model for role-substitution (skill mix) in dental services.

• Charlotte Camp recently joined the Manchester Centre for Health Economics. Charlie worked for two years at a pharmaceutical market research agency in Cheshire, working predominantly in the CNS spectrum of diseases. Charlie graduated with an Economics BSc from Bristol University in 2010, followed by an MSc in Business Analytics and Management Science from Southampton University in 2011. Her current work involves evaluating the success of the Advancing Quality pay-for-performance initiative running in North West hospitals, with a particular focus on its recent extension into care quality in dementia.

October 2013

The Manchester Centre for Health Economics has recently been joined by several new staff and students:

• Alex Turner will begin his PhD having worked as a research associate with us for a year. The PhD focuses on analysing the long-term and cross-sectoral welfare consequences of a social and emotional well being curriculum for children in primary schools. His PhD is partially funded by the President's Doctoral Scholar Award scheme, a flagship elite studentship scheme aimed at "supporting and developing tomorrow's global research leaders”.
• Sean Gavan will begin a PhD in Health Economics. His research focuses on an economic evaluation of a biomarker test to allow stratification of treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. He will be supervised by Katherine Payne, Mark Harrison, and Anne Barton. He has a background in economics and health economics.
• Staurt Wright starts as a Research Associate in Health Economics. He will be working with Katherine on the PINSA project which is an evaluation of the methods of information provision for the newborn bloodspot screening programme.
• Matthew Hamilton starts as a Research Associate in Health Economics. He will be working with Linda Davies on economic modelling and integrated clinical and economic trials in the areas of psoriasis and mental health. He has a background in mental health service system and policy reform in Australia and Ireland and has also worked as a teacher in CentralAmerica and the Eastern Caribbean.
• Elizabeth Camacho starts as a Research Associate. She will be working with Linda Davies on mental health projects focusing on economic evaluation, mental health interventions, and integrated clinical and economic trials.  She has a background in epidemiology with an interest in health economics.

• Caroline Vass will talk at this year's Methods@Manchester Methods Fair on the 9th October on the topic of eliciting people’s preferences with Discrete Choice Experiments.  Caroline will draw from knowledge aquired as part of her PhD into the use of such experiments in health care.

• Katherine Payne will attend a workshop on Methods For Conducting Process Analyses And Managing Economic Data In Clinical Trials Of Complex Interventions. 3rd-5th October 2013, Nitra, Slovakia Institute for Applied Psychology, Department of Nursing  Faculty of Social Sciences and Health Care Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia
• Katherine Payne will present on the topic of "ISPOR good research practices for the economic evaluation of personalized medicines" at the Second Annual Health Economics and Personalized Medicine Symposium - 28th-29th October, 2013, Luxembourg

September 2013

• Katherine Payne will be presenting at the University of Exeter on the 24th September on the topic of "valuing the economic benefits of complex interventions: when maximising health is not sufficient".
• Caroline Vass presented at the NIHR School for Primary Care Research meeting at Balliol College in Oxford. She discussed her PhD and a poster (pdf, 228KB) about her recent systematic review.

August 2013

• Brenda Gannon has joined the Manchester Centre for Health Economics as Reader in Health Economics and will work on health econometrics research, with particular focus on economics of ageing and related analysis of longitudinal datasets, e.g. ELSA. Current projects include a feasibility study on Key Performance Indicators in Emergency Medicine with colleagues in Ireland and Structural Break/Threshold models in health data with colleagues in Australia. She is a regular participant in the European Health Econometrics workshops.
• On the 14-16th August Søren Rud Kristensen attended the Nordic Health Economics Study Group in Oslo, Norway. The paper "Price setting in pay for performance schemes: Theory and practice" was presented. The paper was co-authored with Luigi Sicilini of the University of York and Matt Sutton of the University of Manchester
• Brenda Gannon has co-authored a paper which has received national press attention. Paper details: Fineberg N., Haddad P., Carpenter P., Gannon B., Sharpe R., Young A., Joyce E., Rowe J., Wellsted D., Nutt D., Sahakian B. (2013). The size, burden and cost of disorders of the brain in the UK. Journal of Psychopharmacology.
  • The Telegraph coverage
  • Daily Mail coverage
  • Reuters coverage

July 2013

The Manchester Centre for Health Economics has recently taken on several new staff at various levels:

• Dionysios Ntais - Research Associate in Health Economics. Dionysios will be working with Prof. Linda Davies on a number of NIHR funded projects in the areas of mental health and complex health care needs.
• Philip Britteon – NIHR Research Methods Intern. Phillip will be working with the Centre for 3 months between his 2nd and 3rd years of a BEconSc degree at the University of Manchester. He will be assisting on a project looking at the relationship between the medical school from which doctors graduate and their pay. The project will be supervised by James McDonald and Thomas Allen.
• Rob Taaffe – NIHR Research Methods Intern. Rob joins the Centre for 3 months having completed a degree in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Manchester. He will be supervised by Eleanor Heather while researching how the HAQ (Health Assessment Questionnaire) score has been used within economic models for the evaluation of anti-TNFs for rheumatoid arthritis.
• Jack Higgins – MCHE Research Methods Intern. Jack will be working alongside Katherine Payne, Ewan Grey and Ian Jacob following successful completion of a Postgraduate Diploma in Economics at the University of Manchester. Jack also completed his BSc in Economics at the University of Lancaster. He will be examining the current methodology used for costing genetic tests in addition to the latest technologies for breast cancer screening.
• Cheryl Jones – Masters dissertation student, University of York. Cheryl will be conducting her dissertation at the Centre under the supervision of Prof. Katherine Payne. The topic is on the extent to which informed consent affects the cost effectiveness of newborn blood spot screening.

June 2013

The Manchester Centre for Health Economics has 8 papers accepted to the Health Economists' Study group held at the University of Warwick.

• Paper abstracts (pdf, 161KB)

May 2013

• Dr. Eleonora Fichera has been awarded a Special Project grant Scheme from the Secretary-General of The Royal Economic Society to support the International Workshop entitled "Influencing the provision of health care. Quality, financial incentives and future challenges".
• Dr. Eleonora Fichera has been awarded a 3-year MRC Early Career Fellowship in Economics of Health. The Fellowship is entitled “The effect of intervention on individual health: application of methods to analyse heterogeneity of treatment and heterogeneity of treated”. The aim of the Fellowship is to determine the causal and heterogeneous effect of the Quality and Outcomes framework on individual health behaviours and mental health conditions taking into account differences in practices quality, individual cognitive abilities and wealth. Eleonora will visit Prof. John Mullahy at the Department of Population Health Science at the University of Wisconsin – Madison (U.S.A.) as part of her Fellowship. The Fellowship will run from September 2013 to September 2016
• Dr Søren Rud Kristensen has been awarded a postdoctoral grant from the Danish Council for Independent Research | Social Sciences. The aim of the research is to analyse how reference points and risk affect organisational responses to reimbursement contracts in the public sector.  Søren will develop a formal hypothesis generating framework that will subsequently be tested empirically on data from recent hospital reimbursement reforms in the UK, US and Denmark. the fellowship will run from July 2013-December 2015.
• Eleanor Heather will present work on the economic impacts of side-effects from rheumatoid arthritis drugs at the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) conference  on the 12th-15th June. Travel and accommodation will be covered by a travel bursary awarded by EULAR to Eleanor in recognition of the importance of this research.

April 2013

• The Manchester Centre for Health Economics and the Economics discipline area are organising an international workshop on Health Economics entitled "Influencing the provision of health care. Quality, financial incentives and future challenges". The one-day workshop will be held on the 20th of May and will focus mainly on financial incentives, pay for performance schemes and competition issues in the health care sector. It will be co-chaired by Professor Rachel Griffith and Professor Matt Sutton. It will consist of five 45-minute presentations (including discussion). Funding comes from the National Institute for Health Research and the Royal Economic Society as part of its aim to promote the study of economic science.
  • Contacts:
    Eleonora Fichera
    Mario Pezzino
    Alejandro Saporiti
  • Flyer (pdf, 632KB)
  • Website
  • Programme (pdf, 611KB)

March 2013

• A paper on which Matt Sutton is a co-author has recently been the subject of an artical on the general practice website Pulse.
  See: Full paper.

• Dr Wendy Gidman has been awarded a 2 year NIHR research methods fellowship to develop skills and formal training in health economics. Wendy is a qualified pharmacist and so will use the fellowship to obtain the necessary experience to change career paths. She will undertake an MSc as part of this training, and apply the theory and techniques learned to the topic of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA). Wendy will be the fifth person to join the department under this scheme aimed at expanding capacity within the discipline.

February 2013

• Dr Mark Harrison and Rachel Meacock are part of a multi-disciplinary team that have been successfully awarded NIHR Health Services and Devlivery Research Programme funding of £600,000 for a project entitled "The effectiveness of the Older prisoner Health and Social Care Assessment and Plan (OHSCAP): A Randomised Controlled Trial". This project will be conducted in collaboration with colleagues from The Institute of Brain, Behaviour and Mental Health.

January 2013

• The Manchester Centre for Health Economics has recently recruited several new members of staff. Claire Pleasance, Ewan Gray and Alex Turner. They will work on varied projects from cost-effectiveness to hospital incentives.

December 2012

• On the 7th December the Centre for Health Economics will host a special event ran by the centres' PhD students. The event aims to provide an introduction to health economics and facilitate networking across different centres and groups within the school. PhD students and research assistants will present their work. There will be a keynote speech from Professor Katherine Payne. Poster (pdf, 489KB)

November 2012

• Will Whittaker and Steve Birch's paper, Provider incentives and access to dental care: Evaluating NHS reforms in England; is one of the Editors choice articles for Social Science and Medicine.

• The Health Economics group will be presenting 3 papers at the HESG winter conference in Exeter  January 9-11. More Details are on the conference website.

1. Stephen Birch, Veloshnee Govender, Jana Fried, John Eyles, Vanessa Daries, Mosa Moshabela and Susan Cleary - Does treatment observation each day keep the patient away? Analysing the determinants of TB adherence in South Africa.
2. Søren Rud Kristensen and Matt Sutton - Local targets for national objectives - Lessons from bottom-up design of P4P
3. Alexander Turner, Matt Sutton & Silviya Nikolova - Impact of Hospital Pay-for-Performance Structures on Quality Improvement: Difference-in-Differences estimates from the CQUIN programme in England
    

• See: Abstracts (PDF, 76 KB)

October 2012

• Steve Birch will present at the Second Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Beijing. Researchers, policy-makers, funders, implementers, civil society, media representatives and other stakeholders will gather to share new evidence, identify opportunities and gaps, build understanding across disciplinary boundaries. There is a focus on the use of evidence in decision-making in low- and middle-income countries. Abstract (PDF, 60 KB)

• Syed Mohiuddin has recently been awarded a Researchers into Management Level 5 Award.  The award is certified by the Institute of Leadership and Management, the leading European awarding body for qualifications in leadership and management. In recognition of this achievement, he will receive a Certificate of Achievement from the Director of Human Resources. The Annual Awards Ceremony will take place in the Barnes Wallis Restaurant, Barnes Wallis Building, Sackville Street Campus. Date: Friday 14th December 2012. Time: 12:15 – 14:00.

September 2012

• Professor Stephen Birch will be presenting in the plenary session of the Fourth International Conference on Science in Society. Stephen will be joined by other world leading thinkers and innovators. More information can be found on the conference website.

• Rachel Meacock has been invited to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to present a working paper which develops a framework to evaluate the effectiveness of financial incentive schemes in health care. This framework is applied to the Advancing Quality scheme. The working paper has also been discussed at the June HESG meeting (see below for details and abstract).

• Eleonora Fichera presented “State and Self investments in Health” at the Centre for Primary Care on the 18th of September.

August 2012

• Rachel Meacock and Mark Harrison attended the Nordic Health Economists´ Study Group meeting August 15.-17. 2012, Kuopio, Finland. There they presented the preliminary findings from innovative work modelling the effects of different doses for the treatment of haemophilia.
  • Background: Haemophilia is a genetic disorder that impairs the blood’s ability to clot, leaving sufferers susceptible to prolonged episodes of bleeding which are potentially life threatening. Patients can become immune to treatment unless given Immune Tolerance Induction (ITI), a high-cost intervention for which evidence to support clinical effectiveness exists, but a lack of census remains regarding the optimum dosing regimen.
  • Aim: To develop a method to determine the optimal dose of a high-cost drug and apply it to ITI.
  • Methods: We use data from a recently conducted international, multicentre, randomised controlled trial to determine the optimal dosing regimen of ITI in terms of both costs and health benefits. We explore the methodological challenges faced when evaluation treatments for this rare life-long disease, including the lack of available utility estimates for haemophilia patients, the valuation of health states in paediatric populations, the impact of events such as bleeding episodes upon these health states, assumptions regarding the long-term effects of events and treatment on health-related quality of life and costs and the uncertainty resulting from these assumptions. We consider the most appropriate type of economic model for use in future work and the prospect of modelling a third hybrid dosing regimen. Finally, we explore relevant considerations beyond the standard value for money criteria such as the orphan drug argument and societal compassion for this patient group following the blood safety issues of the 1970s and 1980s.
  • Results: The rate of success did not significantly differ between the two treatment arms (24/58 Low dose (LD) versus 22/57 High dose (HD), P=0.909). Differences were however observed between the two arms in terms of the rate of intercurrent bleeding, with 684 bleeds occurring in the LD arm compared to just 282 in the HD (P=0.0019, hazard ratio 2.2). Initial estimates put the average cost of LD ITI at £191,677 per patient compared to £896,718 for HD ITI.

• Congratulations to Thomas Allen, Ian Jacob and Caroline Vass for successfully passing their first year PhD vivas. As they continue on their voyage of discovery they are joined by two new bright young minds, Rachel Meacock and Alex Thompson will begin their PhD studies in September.

• Dr. Mario Pezzino (lecturer in Industrial Organisation), Dr. Alejandro Saporiti (lecturer in Microeconomics) and Dr. Eleonora Fichera have obtained an NIHR Research Methods Opportunity Funding from November 2012 on a project entitled “Using Industrial Organization and Game Theoretic models to study competition and Matching in the market for health care. An application to the market for General Practitioners and the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF).”

July 2012

• The Health Economics group will be presenting 7 papers at the July 2012 European Conference on Health Economics at Zürich University.

1. Steve Birch - Affordability as a positive concept: Analysing how households meet the costs of care across communities and between conditions
2. Yiu-Shing Lau, Thomas Mason & Matt Sutton - How do financial incentives to improve the quality of care lead to better patient outcomes?
3. Will Whittaker - Diagnosing financial problems for the State – an analysis of the impacts of different health problems on public finances
4. Mark Harrison, Ian Jacob, Matt Sutton, John Radford and Andrew Renehan - Modelling capacity for more resource-intensive services - An application of Discrete Event Simulation to Flexible Sigmoidoscopy for colorectal cancer
5. Silviya Nikolova & Matt Sutton - Can differences in Patient Reported Outcome Measures be attributed to providers?
6. Eleonora Fichera & Matthew Sutton - Health interventions, health shocks and individual health investments: An Economic Analysis of the English Old Population
7. Søren Kristensen - To pay or not to pay for performance?

See: Abstracts (PDF, 50 KB)

• Eleonora Fichera and John Gathergood (School of Economics, University of Nottingham) have got their paper entitled "Health and Wealth: Evidence from House Price Shocks" accepted to the 21st European Workshop on Econometrics and Health Economics at the University of Lund (5-7 September, 2012).

June 2012

• The Health Economics group will be presenting 4 papers at the HESG summer conference in Oxford June 25-27. More Details are on the conference website.

1. Matt Sutton, Silviya Nikolova - What can routine collection of patient reported outcome measures tell us about waiting times?
2. Ian Jacob, Katherine Payne - Evaluating the economic impact of technological advances in diagnostics: the case of high throughput sequencing for hereditary breast cancer
3. Thomas Mason, Yiu-Sing Lau, Matt Sutton - How do financial incentives impact on the distribution of the quality of care? Evidence from the Advancing Quality (AQ) initiative
4. Rachel Meacock, Søren Kristensen, Matt Sutton - How should we assess whether financial incentives for providers are cost-effective?

See: Abstracts (PDF, 20 KB)

May 2012

• The Health Economics group is pleased to be joined by Søren Kristensen. Søren was previously a PhD student at the University of Southern Demark researching hospital incentives and pay-for-performance. During his studies Søren visited the University of Manchester and spent 6 months with the Health Economics group. He will be working on hospital incentives and resource allocation.

March 2012

• MSc Economics of Health applications being accepted for 2012/13. Please contact the programme directors: Eleonora Fichera or William Whittaker.

February 2012

• The Health Economics group has been selected to present 7 papers at the 2012 European Conference on Health Economics at Zürich University.

1. Steve Birch - Affordability as a positive concept: Analysing how households meet the costs of care across communities and between conditions
2. Yiu-Shing Lau, Thomas Mason and Matt Sutton - How do financial incentives to improve the quality of care lead to better patient outcomes?
3. Will Whittaker - Diagnosing financial problems for the State – an analysis of the impacts of different health problems on public finances
4. Mark Harrison, Ian Jacob, Matt Sutton, John Radford and Andrew Renehan - Modelling capacity for more resource-intensive services - An application of Discrete Event Simulation to Flexible Sigmoidoscopy for colorectal cancer
5. Silviya Nikolova & Matt Sutton - Can differences in Patient Reported Outcome Measures be attributed to providers?
6. Eleonora Fichera & Matthew Sutton - Health interventions, health shocks and individual health investments: An Economic Analysis of the English Old Population
7. Søren Kristensen - To pay or not to pay for performance?

• Dr. Eleonora Fichera has obtained a seed-corn funding from the Manchester Interdisciplinary Collaboration for research on Ageing with James Banks, Peter Bower and Matt Sutton.

January 2012

• Prof. Steve Birch presented at the Faculty of Dentistry, McGill University as part of their Research Seminar Series. The topic title was "Exploring continuity of care in publicly funded dentistry: making dollars or making sense?". Poster (pdf, 172KB) with more details.

• Prof. Steve Birch has contributed to the most recent edition of The Elgar Companion to Health Economics. The chapter is entitled "Decision rules in economics evaluation revisited" and is co-authored with Amiram Gafni. The book provides an authoritative and comprehensive overview of modern health economics.

• Award of £1 million grant from the Department of Health to evaluate Payment by Results (PbR) for Drug and Alcohol Recovery
  A team from the Health Sciences Research Group has been successful in gaining a £1million Department of Health Policy Research Programme grant to evaluate Payment by Results (PbR) schemes in the treatment of addiction. The Manchester team will be led by Dr Michael Donmall, Director of the National Drug Evidence Centre (NDEC) & Reader in Health Sciences, and Prof Matt Sutton, Professor of Health Economics, together with Dr Tim Millar and Andrew Jones. The research project, to be conducted over three years, is being undertaken in collaboration with colleagues at the Institute for Criminal Policy Research, Birkbeck, University of London, RAND Europe and UserVoice. It will deliver a robust assessment of this important new approach to the care of problem drug users, in work that has key national policy implications. Thomas Mason and Matt Sutton will undertake the economic component of the evaluation. Further details of the study are available on the DH website.

• Eleonora Fichera will be presenting the following paper at the Centre for the Study of African Economies 2012 conference, Oxford University (18-20 March 2012).
  • Disney R., Fichera E. Owens T. - Credit constraints and credit spillovers in formal and informal markets: Evidence from Malawi  
    This paper uses Malawi household data on formal and informal credit to test: a) whether households are liquidity constrained, that is, whether, an increase in the borrowing limit affects credit demand; and b) whether there are spillovers between credit sources, that is, the credit limit of one sector has an impact on the demand for credit in another sector. Using a set of measures of local competition between lenders to disentangle demand and supply equations, we find that a ten percentage point increase in the informal credit limit increases credit demand by about the same amount; and a ten percentage point increase in the credit limit of the microfinance programs increases the demand for formal credit by more than four percentage points. An increase of ten percentage points in the credit limit of one microfinance program decreases informal demand by about seven percentage points, indicating significant evidence of spillover effects.

• The Health Economics group is due to have 3 papers presented at the Royal Economics Society annual conference in March at the University of Cambridge.

1. Eleonora Fichera, Hugh Gravelle, Mario Pezzino & Matt Sutton - Specification of financial incentives for quality in health care contracts in England
2. Thomas Mason, Matt Sutton, William Whittaker & Stephen Birch - The youth of today are sickening: Implications of age and cohort effects in health and service use for NHS planning
3. William Whittaker - The pursuit of happiness? Subjective wellbeing and internal migration in Great Britain.

• The Health Economics group has recently had 5 papers presented at the joint HESG/CES meeting in Aix-en-Provence.

1. Søren Rud Kristensen, Eduardo Fé-Rodríguez, Mickael Bech & Jan Mainz - The price sensitivity of acute stroke care
2. Thomas Mason, Matthew Sutton, Peter Smith & Stephen Campbell - Paying he who pays the piper: who calls the tune now? Incentives for commissioners of health care
3. Tommy Allen, Eleonora Fichera, Matt Sutton - Can payers use prices to improve quality? Evidence fromEnglish hospitals
4. Silviya Nikolova & Matt Sutton - Can differences in Patient Reported Outcome Measures be attributed to providers?
5. Eduardo Fé-Rodríguez & Bruce Hollingsworth - Estimating the effect of retirement on health via panel discontinuity designs

• The Health Economics group is pleased to welcome Dr. Syed Mohiuddin. Syed is working with Prof. Katherine Payne on the mOMEnt (management of Otitis Media with Effusion in childreN with clefT palate) project. The project is about developing an economic model and a value of information analysis to check the feasibility of using ventilation tubes (grommets) for children with cleft palate. Syed previously worked for University of Warwick as a Research Fellow in Health Technology Assessments and for University of Wolverhampton as an Operational Research Lecturer.
• The Health Economics group is pleased to welcome Martin Eden. Martin will be working with Prof. Katherine Payne on the Regard Study. This project is about developing and evaluating genetics services for people with retinal dystrophy. Martin has previously been involved with pharmacy workforce projects and has worked on RCTs of complex interventions in pharmacy and primary care.

December 2011

• Eleonora Fichera has been invited to to give a seminar at the Development Economics Seminar series 2011/12 at the School of Economics, University of Nottingham (14th of March). She will present the paper Credit constraints and credit spillovers in formal and informal markets: Evidence from Malawi.

• Ian Jacob presented current research examining the implementation of flexible sigmoidoscopy for colorectal cancer screening to the Manchester Academic Health Science Centre’s Board of Governors. This study aimed to inform decision makers on how to plan the capacity required to deliver a flexible sigmoidoscopy population-based screening service within a large conurbation, the Greater Manchester and Cheshire Cancer Network. A simulation model was developed to explore alternative screening service scenarios and identify key resource constraints. This research may help to inform the planning and delivery of an efficient screening service for colorectal cancer screening.

November 2011

• Matt Sutton was awarded a Visiting Research Scholarship to the Melbourne Institute for Economic and Social Research. He presented two seminars on 'State and self investments in health' and 'Can payers use prices to improve quality? Evidence from English hospitals' and worked with Professor Anthony Scott to initiate joint work on doctors’ labour markets and pay for performance schemes using the National GP Worklife Survey in England, now in its 6th Wave, and the MABEL longitudinal survey of Australian doctors.

• Steve Birch will be presenting a seminar at the University of British Columbia entitled "Not enough doctors or not enough needs: Refocusing health workforce planning from providers and services to populations and needs". UBC website has more details. In addition Steve is the organiser of a special session on vulnerable populations at the Health Reform in Asian conference in Hong Kong December 9-12th and participating in an invitational workshop of the Ministry of Health of Malaysia on planning for oral health care in the national health system in Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur - December 12-16th.

Octocber 2011

• The Health Economics group is pleased to announce that 4 new researchers have joined the team this month. They will all make great contributions to the group’s research. More details are given below:

• Eleanor Heather is a Research Assistant in Health Economics. She has been awarded a NIHR Research Methods Fellowship to develop her skills in methods of economic evaluation applied to musculoskeletal conditions. The Fellowship runs for two-years. In the first year Eleanor will be studying towards a Masters in Health Economics and Decision Modeling run by the School of Health and Related Research at The University of Sheffield. In year 2, Eleanor will be working on a research project in the area of musculoskeletal conditions. People with inflammatory conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA), can now be offered highly effective but expensive biologic therapies including anti-TNF agents. These therapies can cause minor or major, short-term or long-term AEs, which forces patients to make benefit:risk trade-offs. To date, economic models have not accounted for long-term AEs as the data were not available. The project will aim to quantify the impact of selected AEs on the cost effectiveness of anti-TNF therapies. Eleanor is supervised by Katherine Payne (Professor of Health Economics) and Deborah Symmons (Professor of Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Epidemiology). In 2010, Eleanor obtained a first in economics and Spanish from the University of Dundee.

• Caroline Vass has recently started a PhD funded by the NIHR National School for Primary Care Research. The project involves investigating the framing of risk attributes in discrete choice experiments. DCEs are increasingly used to elicit benefit-risk trade-offs as this approach potentially provides information on individuals’ preferences for risk tolerability or to value risk reduction associated with healthcare interventions and services. However, little attention has been paid to the nature of how risk attributes are framed or perceived. The PhD combines qualitative methods in understanding how competing risk presentation formats affect cognition, decision rules, and the valuations derived, as well as quantitative methods in analysing preference heterogeneity. The PhD is supervised by Katherine Payne (Professor of Health Economics), Dan Rigby (Professor of Economics) and Dr Stephen Campbell (Primary Care). Caroline previously studied at the University of Birmingham where she achieved an Economics BSc in 2010 and a Health Economics MSc in 2011.

• Alex Thompson has been appointed to the position of Research Associate in Economic Evaluation. In July 2010, Alex obtained a first in economics from the University of York. He went on to study towards a Masters in Health Economics at York. Under the supervision of Katherine Payne (Professor of Health Economics), Alex is seeking to produce two papers on a randomised controlled trial for a pharmacogenetic test (the TARGET study). The first paper will investigate the potential impact on cost and effect of introducing this particular pharmacogenetic test in the NHS. The second paper will use a decision-analytic model to explore parameter and structural uncertainty. Alex will also be working with Katherine to develop new research proposals with a focus on the economics of genetics in primary care.

• James McDonald has been awarded a two year NIHR Research Methods Fellowship to develop skills in the methods of economic evaluation applied to health care. Currently James is working as a Research Assistant in Health Economics on a project involving the introduction of salaried general practitioners after the 1997 NHS (Primary Care) Act and the 2004 new General Medical Services Contract. James is supervised by Matt Sutton (Professor of Health Economics) and Bonnie Sibbald (Professor of Health Services Research). Previously James studied Economics at The University of Sheffield. On the completion of his undergraduate course James was awarded an Advanced Course Masters Studentship from the Medical Research Council to undertake an MSc in Economics and Health Economics. James’ dissertation aimed to investigate the ability to map the relationship between a non-preference based measure of health (EPDS) and a generic preference based measure of health (SF-6D).

September 2011

• Matt Sutton was invited to speak at a one-day workshop organised by the Norwegian Health Directorate and the European Observatory on Health Systems in Oslo on the 1st September. The workshop was on “Introducing Pay for Performance (P4P) in the Norwegian health system: Scoping relevant international experiences.” Matt presented a summary of research covering: “Experiences from the Quality and Outcomes Framework in the UK.”

• Congratulations to Dr. Fatiha Shabaruddin on the successful completion of her PhD from the University of Manchester. Her research was supervised by Katherine Payne (University of Manchester) and Rachel Elliott (University of Nottingham) and focused on the economic evaluation of pharmacogenetic tests. Fatiha has recently taken up a position at the University of Malaya, lecturing in both clinical pharmacy and health economics. We all wish her the best in this new role.

August 2011

• Katherine Payne will be presenting on a panel of experts on the topic of "How will innovator technologies fare in an increasingly restrictive global reimbursement environment?: lessons from comparison of cell and gene therapies to conventional biopharmaceuticals" at ISPOR 14th Annual European Congress. The Issue Panel (IP10) will be held on Monday, 7 November 2011: 10:15-11:15.
• Matt Sutton delivered the key-note speech at the Nordic Health Economists' Study Group meeting on the 28th of August. The title of his presentation was: "Paying for improvements in quality: recent experiences in the NHS in England".

July 2011

• The Health Economics group will present 5 papers at the International Health Economics Association (iHEA) 8th World Congress on Health Economics in Toronto - July 10-13.

1. William Whittaker - The pursuit of happiness: Subjective wellbeing and internal migration in Great Britain
2. Matt Sutton, Silviya Nikolova & Ruth McDonald - Impact of a pay-for-quality programme in the North West of England on patient mortality risk
3. Mark Harrison , Mark Dusheiko, Tim Doran, Hugh Gravelle, Matt Sutton, Martin Roland - The impact of financial incentives for improvements in the quality of primary care on emergency hospital admission rates
4. Eleonora Fichera & Matt Sutton - State and Self Investments in Health
5. Stephen Birch - Integrating Workforce Planning within Health Care Planning

June 2011

• The Health Economics group had 3 papers presented at the Summer HESG meeting in Bangor.

1. Søren Rud Kristensen, Matt Sutton, Mickael Bech - What may be the consequences of the NHS in England no longer paying hospitals for emergency readmissions?
2. Shing Lau, Silviya Nikolova and Matt Sutton - Did pressure to meet waiting times targets reduce quality of care?
3. Thomas Mason, Matt Sutton, William Whittaker, Stephen Birch - Forecasting service requirements in the NHS: Applying the Needs Based Analytical Framework.

See: abstracts

• Fatiha Shabaruddin presented a poster entitled "Assessing the costs and benefits of a pharmacogenetic test to reduce the incidence of adverse events" at a recent conference hosted by Prescribing and Research in Medicines Management (PRIMM) in London June 24. This conference focused on the role of patients in reporting suspected Adverse Drug Reactions to pharmacovigilance centres. It was the first conference of its kind, bringing together academic researchers and teachers, practitioners, pharmacovigilance experts and patients to learn more about and debate this topic.

May 2011

• Katherine Payne was an invited speaker and panelist at the European Perspectives in Personalised Medicine held in Brussels on 12 and 13th May 2011. The meeting was organised by The Health Directorate of the European Commission's DG Research and Innovation. Katherine presented on ‘Evaluating the costs and benefits of personalised medicine: A health economists perspective’. The conference aimed to take stock of recent achievements in health related research leading to personalised medicine and helped to identify and prioritise future actions needed at the European level. It brought together over 450 European and national level policy makers, industrial and academic researchers, patients, clinicians and other stakeholders.
• Katherine Payne is a member of the Expert Advisory Group for the ‘Theatre of Debate’ on Pharmacogenetics. Y Touring Theatre of Debate projects tour to schools throughout the UK. In essence the Theatre of Debate model consists of play, a debate and online educational resources.  Katherine presented on the ‘Pharmacogenetics: getting the best from our medicines (and the healthcare budget)’ at a workshop on 18th May 2011 in London. The aim of the Workshop was to provide information, differing viewpoints and stimuli to enable playwright Abi Bown to write an informed and engaging synopsis of a play for this Y Touring Theatre of Debate production that explores the social, moral, scientific and political questions raised by pharmacogenetics. The play tour will begin in November 2011.

April 2011

• Matt Sutton, of The University of Manchester, will deliver the key-note speech at the Nordic Health Economists' Study Group meeting in August 2011. He will present: "Paying for improvements in quality: recent experiences in the NHS in England".
• Linda Davies has joined the core group of methodological experts for the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). During the four year tenure, Linda will serve on the sub panels making funding recommendations for the NIHR Programme Grants for Applied Research scheme (PGfAR).
• The Health Economics group is pleased to be joined by new Research Associate Rachel Meacock. Rachel studied at the University of Sheffield where she obtained her BA Economics and MSc Economics and Health Economics focusing on economic evaluation as well as applied econometrics. She will now be working with Prof. Matt Sutton and Dr. Mark Harrison on a Department of Health funded evaluation of the piloted Women's Enhanced Medium Secure Services (WEMSS). These WEMSS pilot sites are intended to deliver women-centred, holistic care focussed on emotional well-being rather than physical security, and have cared for a sample of woman with complex mental health needs for the past three years.

March 2011

• Matt Sutton of The University of Manchester has been appointed as joint national organiser of the UK Health Economists' Study Group (HESG). The role will be shared with Stephen Morris from University College London. HESG was established in 1972 and performs two main functions: to act as a network; and to organise two conferences per year. These conferences provide a vibrant environment for health economists to interact and discuss ongoing research.

February 2011

• Research Associate Tommy Allen has been awarded a 4 year Faculty/Medical Research Council PhD studentship under the supervision of Prof. Matt Sutton and Dr William Whittaker. The project title is “The impact of provider incentives on professionals, patients and population health" and the focus of the research will be the impact of provider incentives on health outcomes. The study will use structural economic models to link incentives to provider behaviour and the resultant impact upon health care delivery and health outcomes. Existing literature on these incentive schemes focuses on the impact on health care delivery, with little attention paid to how these affect health care professionals and health outcomes.
• The Health Economics group is pleased to be joined again by Jurgita Januleviciute and for the first time by Søren Rud Kristensen. Jurgita is a visiting PhD student from the University of Bergen working on prioritisation in the health care sector and has worked closely with the group in the past. Søren is also a visiting PhD student from the University of Southern Denmark working on incentive and quality in hospital care. The two of them will make a great addition to the Health Economics group.

January 2011

• The Health Economics team has five papers presented at the winter HESG meeting in York:

1.  Thomas Allen and Matt Sutton - Revenue or Reputation: A Quantitative Analysis of General Practitioner Motivation and Peer Effects using Longitudinal Data
2. William Whittaker - The pursuit of happiness: Subjective wellbeing and internal migration in Great Britain
3. Mark Harrison, Mark Dusheiko, Tim Doran, Hugh Gravelle, Matt Sutton, Martin Roland - Does better management of chronic conditions in general practice reduce emergency hospital admissions?
4. Matt Sutton, Silviya Nikolova and Ruth McDonald - Impact of a pay-for-quality programme in the North West of England on patient mortality risk
5. J E Askildsen, T H Holmas, J Januleviciute, O Kaarboe, L Siciliani & M Sutton - Do hospitals respond to prices? Evidence from Norway

See: abstracts

November 2010

• The Health Economics team is pleased to be joined by three new Research Associates: Thomas Mason, Yiu-Shing Lau and Thomas Allen. All three recently graduated from The University of Manchester's MSc Economics course having been supervised by Prof. Matt Sutton for a health economics dissertation. With them they bring a fresh knowledge of economics and a enthusiasm to apply this to health. Welcome aboard!
• PhD Student Fatiha Shabaruddin has been awarded the ISPOR Student Travel Grant which has enabled her to travel to the ISPOR 13th Annual European Congress, November 6-9, 2010. While there she presented a poster on: Examining Patient-Based Costs for Irinotecan Chemotherapy: UK Practice-Based Micro-Costing Study.

October 2010

• Silviya Nikolova will present at the Health, Econometrics and Data Group in York:

Title: Estimating the impact of covariates on waiting times for elective surgery in Scotland: a Conditional Density Estimation approach.

Authors: Silviya Nikolova, Matt Sutton

September 2010

• Katherine Payne has been announced as the winner of the 2010 Practice Research Conference Award, which is sponsored by the Pharmacy Practice Research Trust. The award will be presented at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Conference on Monday 6th September, where Katherine will deliver a 30 minute lecture on her prize-winning research.

The Practice Research Award is presented annually to an individual who has made a significant contribution to the field of pharmacy practice research and has the potential to become a leader in their field. Dr Payne, Senior Research Fellow in Health Economics in the Health Sciences Research Group, will receieve the award in recognition of her work into the economics of pharmacogenetic tests and services.

Prof. Payne said: 'I was surprised and delighted to be told that I had won this award which acknowledges the contribution of my research that applies economic concepts and methods to the evaluation and valuation of pharmacogenetic tests and services. In theory, pharmacogenetics offers the perfect solution to the challenge of maximising value for money from medicines. Targeting medicines in this way should stop scarce healthcare resources being wasted. The reality is that we know pharmacogenetic tests are not perfect. My research aims to generate information on the relative patient (dis)benefits and health care costs of pharmacogenetic tests to support professional decision-making in the NHS.'

August 2010

• William Whittaker and Matt Sutton together with colleagues from the University of Glasgow and the University of Stirling have recently had their research, 'Predicting which people with psychosocial distress are at risk of becoming dependent on state benefits: analysis of routinely available data'; published in the British Medical Journal. The research, which claims GP attendance increases and a worsening mental health state can be identified up to three years prior to an individual claiming Incapacity Benefit; has been discussed in The Times, The Telegraph, The Yorkshire Post, and discussed on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Scotland