DEALE-ING AND DISCOUNTING - A SIMPLE WAY TO COMPUTE THE ACCRUED COSTS OF PREVENTIVE STRATEGIES

Researchers agree on the importance of discounting costs and of including mortality rates in the cost computations. The authors present a simplified mathematical model that allows both DEALE-ing and discounting and permits easy computations of accrued and incremental costs. The general formula of the accrued discounted cost of treating over time of life expectancy is: [GRAPHICS] A systematic discussion of the errors involved in the DEALE approximation shows that it will in most cases truly describe the ordering of the costs of various treatments. The DEALE are compared with the costs obtained by using actual mortality statistics. It was found that when two strategies have actual costs C-A and C-B such as C-A greater than C-B and C-A/C-B superior to 1.25, the ordering of C-A and C-B will always be kept in this simplified model.