During the evaluation of societal risk acceptance based on the Life Quality Index (LQI), the marginal life saving costs have to be assessed and compared with the Societal Willingness to Pay for a marginal increase in life safety.
Our appraisal is therefore that evaluation of societal quality is as important as scientific evaluation: scientific and societal quality evaluation should be considered to be synergistic in terms of learning for the future, accountability and advocacy.
The methodology for societal ex-post evaluation at research group level is still at quite an early stage compared to the internationally accepted methodology for scientific evaluation of research groups as developed by CWTS that all Dutch UMCs adhere to.
A 95% confidence interval for the cost-utility ratio will be calculated and an acceptability curve will be presented For the economic evaluation a societal perspective is employed.
A key challenge to leaders is the tendency for societal stereotypes to bias one's evaluations and expectations.
Gold et al. [ 42] recommend the use of the societal perspective (represented by laypersons) for societal decision making (e.g. economic evaluation), and the patient's perspective for guideline development and patient decision making, each using a trade-off based method (e.g. TTO, DCE) to yield valuations.
For an evaluation from a societal perspective, valuations of direct medical resources are estimated comprising 'true economic' costs, i.e. including shares of fixed costs and hospital overheads.
For economic evaluation from the societal perspective data on service use and indirect costs were collected from several sources: ▪ Patients in both research groups filled out a structured costs booklet each three months.
For economic evaluation from a societal perspective, only patients' self-reported resource use offers an account of out-of-pocket payments (e.g. paid household help or over-the-counter medications).
Finally, as we mentioned before, it is argued that for an evaluation from a societal perspective non-medical costs and benefits in LysG, that is, productivity gains, paid pensions, and non-health-related quality of life need to be included in economic evaluations (Liljas et al, 2008).
