Grant: Project Grant

Societal and health care resources are limited. Stakeholders such as policy makers, insurers, and employers need to make decisions on how to best allocate funding to different health care interventions such as new drugs. Health economic evaluation is a tool commonly used to inform these funding decisions. In economic evaluations, the costs of an intervention are compared to its benefits. Productivity losses for some diseases are substantial and even greater than their direct healthcare costs (e.g., physician, hospital and drug costs). Therefore, productivity loss due to illness is an important cost component that should be considered in economic evaluations from a societal perspective. The impact of illness on work productivity is usually measured in terms of three components: job loss, absenteeism (absence from work) and presenteeism (reduced performance and productivity while working). Currently, only a few population-based studies in other countries, and none in Canada, have comprehensively measured work productivity losses due to illness. Consequently, economic evaluations largely do not incorporate appropriately estimated productivity losses. The goal of our research is to improve the quality of economic evaluations by providing better productivity loss estimates. Specifically, using a population-based survey conducted by Statistics Canada, we will measure and value productivity losses among different chronic diseases, compare two different methods of measuring presenteeism, and identify the factors other than health (e.g., lifestyle and work-related characteristics) that may affect productivity. This study will enhance our understanding of the burden of specific diseases in terms of work productivity losses. The information generated can be used in other economic evaluation studies to improve the accuracy of their productivity loss estimates. When funding for health care interventions is based on better economic evaluations, society will directly benefit.