stigma) is crucial in the case of mental health. changes in productivity, care giving or in the level of vandalism), also the consideration of non-monetary, intangible consequences (e.g. service costs, out-of-pocket costs) and tangible consequences that can be valued in monetary terms (e.g. through special education needs), and the patient and family domains (e.g. through police interventions), the education sector (e.g. through social care), the criminal justice system (e.g. Relevant sectors include the social sector (e.g. These interventions within the healthcare sector, which have consequences spilling over to other sectors, are referred to as inter-sectoral costs and benefits (ICBs). Around 37% of Austrians have complementary private health insurance, resulting in a two-tier healthcare system.įor many ill-health conditions, such as mental diseases, the economic consequences are not limited to the healthcare sector, but also spread to other sectors. There is no gate-keeping system in place, which means that medical services and treatments can be utilized to a great extent and with great variety across different regions.
In the Austrian health care system, the principal responsibility for the public health system is shared by the central government, nine federal state governments and agents. This is particularly the case if health care provision and funding are both fragmented, such as in Austria. Another factor is that although the economic burden of mental diseases in regards to costs is thought to be massive, resulting in doubled total costs for persons with mental diseases compared to those without, calculating exact costs is complicated. Even minor changes in definitions may cause considerable variation in the estimation of disease prevalence and service utilization. One factor is the reliability of the measurement and the different thresholds regarding the epidemiology of diseases. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The competing interests statement has been added to the manuscript.Ī comprehensive and comparable assessment of the economic burden of a disease and the value of relevant care in economic evaluations across sectors and countries are in general difficult, however, it is especially of a challenge in the case of mental diseases. This research project was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.įunding: This study aimed to inform the development of a resource use measurement instrument and harmonized reference unit costs valid for multi-sectoral and multi-national cost assessments for mental health diseases as part of the European PECUNIA (ProgrammE in Costing, resource use measurement and outcome valuation for Use in multi-sectoral National and International health economic evaluAtions (grant agreement No 779292)) project. Received: ApAccepted: DecemPublished: January 21, 2022Ĭopyright: © 2022 Fischer et al. PLoS ONE 17(1):Įditor: Athina Economou, University of Thessaly, GREECE
Citation: Fischer C, Mayer S, Perić N, Simon J, on behalf of the PECUNIA Group (2022) Establishing a comprehensive list of mental health-related services and resource use items in Austria: A national-level, cross-sectoral country report for the PECUNIA project.
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