Cost-Effectiveness of Incentivized Health Delivery
RCTReview
Traditional volunteer community health worker programs often demonstrate low cost-effectiveness due to high attrition and low service activity, making public health investments inefficient.
Picture this
Adding small performance payments and micro-entrepreneurial sales to health workers raises their initial operating cost slightly, but dramatically increases the number of lives saved. Because the volume of successful health outcomes rises far faster than the extra cost, the overall cost to save a single year of human life drops significantly compared to standard volunteer setups.
What the evidence says
The average cost per year of life saved by Community Health Promoters was US$65 in 2013, compared to baseline cost-effectiveness estimates for volunteer-based health programs ranging from US$82 to US$3,396 per year of life saved.
- Who was studied
- ~7,000 households and >11,000 children across 214 rural villages in Uganda.
- How
- Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) evaluating mortality impacts after 3 years combined with economic cost-effectiveness analysis measured in US dollars per year of life saved (YLS) in 2013.
What to do
Transition unpaid volunteer community health programs into incentivized micro-entrepreneurship models to reduce the financial cost per year of life saved below $70.
From the source
"Researchers estimate that the average cost per year of life saved by CHPs was US$65 in 2013. Cost-effectiveness estimates for other volunteer-based health programs range from US$82 to US$3,396."
in-the-business-of-saving-lives.pdf