Economic value of community-based services for problematic sexual behaviors in youth: A mixed-method cost-effectiveness analysis

Defining and Predicting High Cost Utilization in Children’s Outpatient Mental Health Services

“…It is also important to consider that there are naturally costs incurred by and billed for service delivery and the additional costs necessary to support EBP implementation presents challenges for administrators and policy makers. However, data suggest that benefits of EBP implementation translate across levels of service settings, including at the client, programmatic or administrative and the broader societal and public health level, that exceed the costs (Dopp et al 2019;Grimes et al 2011;Nakamura et al 2011). Additionally, our data suggest that it might be fruitful to consider bolstering dedicated funds for provider training and fidelity monitoring of EBPs that target the presenting problems and demographic characteristics of high service users to prevent or offset subsequent up-stream costs of more intensive, acute care services.…”

“…has been well documented (Dopp et al 2017;Dopp et al 2019). Despite these potential long-term benefits, there are significant disparities in access to outpatient mental health care, especially evidence-based care (Whitney and Peterson 2019).…”

“…These initiatives are consistent with the objective of implementation science to integrate EBPs into routine care settings using evidence-informed implementation strategies. EBPs have the potential to result in better outcomes, shortened treatment duration as well as reduced rate of entering a higher level of care and, when coupled with implementation strategies, are known to be cost effective in community-based settings serving youth (Dopp et al 2017(Dopp et al , 2019Grimes et al 2011). Additionally, the specific focus on outpatient users aids enhancement to their outpatient services and helps prevent entry into costly inpatient and crisis services.…”

Qualitative economic evaluation of psychosocial interventions: How looking beyond the numbers helps illuminate programmatic costs and benefits.

“…For our purposes, this entailed determining how much money in treatment costs was required to produce a one standard deviation decrease in PSB on a scale measuring PSB of youth. Specifically, the cost-effectiveness ratio (CER) revealed that “an expenditure of $1,772 was associated with each unit ( d = 1.0) decrease in PSB” (Dopp et al, 2020, p. 7). Though on the surface appearing to be a purely quantitative exercise, calculating and interpreting this CER was deeply rooted qualitative data and methods.…”

“…We summarize our study design in the brief synopsis that follows, highlighting how important qualitative data were to calculating and interpreting the costeffectiveness of PSB-CBT. Because the results of our mixed-method economic evaluation are detailed elsewhere (Dopp et al, 2019(Dopp et al, , 2020Mundey et al, 2020Mundey et al, , 2021-along with further methodological and demographic detail about study sites, participants, and procedures-here we focus on basic study design and major takeaways from our use of qualitative data to inform utilization of these approaches in other economic evaluations of psychosocial interventions. Rather than presenting the empirical findings emanating out of our data, this article is methodological in scope, aiming to unpack the "how" and the "why" behind our decision to prioritize qualitative methods in cost evaluation of PSB-CBT.…”