Willingness to pay for cancer prevention, screening, diagnosis, and treatment: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Willingness to pay (WTP) studies examine the maximum amount of money an individual is willing to pay for a specified health intervention, and can be used to inform coverage and reimbursement decisions. Our objectives were to assess how people value cancer-related interventions, identify differences in the methodologies used, and review the trends in studies’ publication.

Areas covered

We extracted PubMed and EconLit articles published in 1997–2020 that reported WTP for cancer-related interventions, characterized the methodological differences and summarized each intervention’s mean and median WTP values. We reviewed 1,331 abstracts and identified 103 relevant WTP studies, of which 37 (36%) focused on treatment followed by screening (26), prevention (21), diagnosis (7) and other interventions (12). The methods used to determine WTP values were primarily discrete-choice questions (n = 54, 52%), bidding games (15), payment cards (12) and open-ended questions (12). We found a wide variation in WTP reported values ranged from below $100 to over $20,000.

Expert opinion

The WTP literature on oncology interventions has grown rapidly. There is considerable heterogeneity with respect to the type of interventions and diseases assessed, the respondents’ characteristics, and the study methodologies. This points to the need to establish international guidelines for best practices in this field.

KEYWORDS:

• Cancer
• contingent valuation
• discrete choice experiment
• oncology
• willingness to pay

Article highlights

• Our objectives were to assess how people value cancer-related interventions, identify differences in the methodologies used, and review the trends in studies’ publication.

• We reviewed 1,331 abstracts and identified 103 relevant willingness to pay (WTP) studies, focused on treatment, screening, prevention, diagnosis and other interventions.

• The methods used to determine WTP values were primarily discrete-choice questions, bidding games, payment cards and open-ended questions.

• There is a considerable heterogeneity with respect to the type of interventions and diseases assessed, the respondents’ characteristics, and the study methodologies. This points to the need to establish international guidelines for best practices in this field.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no 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. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer disclosures

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

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.