Economic Evaluations of Pharmacologic Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder: A Systematic Literature Review

Source:

Onuoha, E. N., Leff, J. A., Schackman, B. R., McCollister, K. E., Polsky, D., & Murphy, S. M. (2021). Economic evaluations of pharmacologic treatment for opioid use disorder: a systematic literature review. Value in Health, 24(7), 1068-1083.

Highlights

• There is new evidence on buprenorphine and strengthened evidence on methadone, indicating that both are economically advantageous treatments for opioid use disorder compared with no pharmacotherapy.

• Approximately half of the recent cost-effectiveness studies used a generic preference-based measure of effectiveness (ie, quality-adjusted life-years or disability-adjusted life-years), limiting broad comparison across diseases/disorders because quality-adjusted life-years or disability-adjusted life-years are the only health economic effectiveness measures with commonly accepted value thresholds. There is wide variation in disease/disorder-specific measures, thereby limiting comparisons within the substance use disorder literature.

• More economic evidence is needed on injectable naltrexone and novel treatment-delivery modalities.