The quality of published health economic evaluations on screening programs in China: a systematic review and quantitative appraisal

ABSTRACT

Background

This study seeks to assess the quality of HEEs reporting on screening programs over the last 20 years in China, to identify potential predictors of reporting quality.

Methods

We performed a literature search of HEE studies published in PubMed, Embase, CNKI, and WANFANG from 2000 to 2021. The search terms included ‘screening,’ ‘China,’ ‘CEA,’ ‘CBA,’ ‘CUA,’ and all other names for health economic evaluation. Two reviewers independently extracted data and assessed the reporting quality using CHEERS checklist. A generalized linear regression analysis was used to identify the predictors of reporting quality.

Results

133 of 1,281 identified studies was included. The reporting quality scores showed an increasing trend and the mean score was 0.56. Some items were underreported, such as study perspective, discount rate, measurement of effectiveness, analytical methods, uncertainty, heterogeneity etc. Five factors (year of publication, journal type, first author’s affiliation, economic evaluation type, specialty journals or not) predicted a higher score of reporting quality in the regression analyses (P < 0.05).

Conclusions

Overall, the quality of HEEs on screening programs in China showed an improving trend. Given the significance of reporting quality, it is advisable to report HEE results following standard evaluation guidelines to improve their transparency.

KEYWORDS:

• Reporting quality
• screening programs
• China
• CHEERS
• health economic evaluation

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank all the participants for their cooperation.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Author contributions

Y Xia extracted and analyzed the data and drafted the manuscript. D Lian extracted data and evaluated the articles. L Si helped with emphasizing key points and with language. Y Yang & J Ming contributed to the writing and provided further suggestions. Y Wei & Y Chen conceived the perspective and contributed to the writing. All authors reviewed the manuscript and approved the final version of the manuscript to be published.

Previous presentation

The abstract in the paper have been previously presented at a meeting (The 2022 HTAi Annual Meeting):

Date: Monday 26 June 2022 at 1:25:00 PM – 1:35:00 PM CEST

Location: Jaarbeurs Convention Centre, Utrecht, The Netherlands & HTAi 2022 Virtual Platform

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14737167.2022.2131542

Notes

1. A specialty journal refers to journals focused on public health, epidemiology, economics, and biostatistics.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by China Medical Board (CMB) under Grant [19-318], A Demonstration Program on Health Technology Assessment in China.