Economic evaluation of the Happy Talk pilot effectiveness trial: A targeted selective speech, language and communication intervention for children from areas of social disadvantage

Figures & data

Figure 1. Incremental cost-effectiveness planes.

Table I. Cost analysis: Happy talk.

	Hours/# units	€/unit	€ Baseline: Senior SLT	€ SA: Grade SLT
Speech & Language Therapist: Senior; grade	139^a	37.73; 25.56^b	5244.27	4372.88
Consumables
Refreshments^b			310.00	310.00
Materials:			100.00	100.00
Calendars	77	4.00 ^c	308.00	308.00
Books	77	4.00^c	308.00	308.00
Posters	6	8.00^c	48.00	48.00
Total			6318.27	5446.88
Average/School^d			3159.14	2723.44
Average/Child^e			82.06	70.74

^aRetrospective estimate based on therapists own records, includes sessions with parents (55 hours); staff (12 hours); preparation for sessions (1 hour of preparation per hour) and coaching (5 hours).

^bDepartment of Health Salary scales, adjusted for Pay Related Social Insurance (PRSI), Pensions and overhead as per HIQA (2020).

^cProject financial records.

^dTwo schools.

^eBased on 77 children.

Table II. Economic evaluation results.

		CEA		CUA		Scenario Analysis
	Cost (€)	PLS5	ICER (€/ unit change PLS5)	QALYS^a	ICER (€/QALY)	Cost (€)	CEA: ICER (€/ unit change PLS5)	CUA: ICER (€/QALY)
Happy Talk	82.06	3.10		–0.0153		70.74
Usual Care	0	–3.20		–0.0135		0
Incremental	82.06	6.30	13.02	–0.0018	Dominated^b	70.71	11.23	Dominated

CEA: Cost Effectiveness Analysis; CUA: Cost Utility Analysis; PLS-5: Pre-school language scales 5^th Edition (Zimmerman et al., 2014); ICER: Incremental Cost Effectiveness; QALYS: Quality Adjusted Life Years.

^aQALYs estimated using CHU9D.

^bDominated indicates Happy Talk is less effective and more expensive than usual care so cannot be considered cost effective.

Figure 2. Cost-effectiveness acceptability curves.

HIQA. (2020) Guidelines for the economic evaluation of health technologies in Ireland. Retrieved December 14, 2020, from https://www.hiqa.ie/reports-and-publications/health-technology-assessment/guidelines-economic-evaluation-health

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Zimmerman, I.L., Steiner, V.G., & Pond, R.E. (2014). Preschool Language Scales–Fifth Edition (PLS-5). San-Antonio, TX: Pearson.

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