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

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.