A systematic review comparing the costs of chiropractic care to other interventions for spine pain in the United States

doi:10.1186/s12913-015-1140-5

PMC full text:

BMC Health Serv Res. 2015; 15: 474.

Published online 2015 Oct 19. doi: 10.1186/s12913-015-1140-5

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Table 7

Quality assessment of cost comparison studies also examining clinical outcomes

#	Question	Bronfort, 2000 [46]	Carey, 1995 [40]	Cherkin, 1998 [44]	Haas, 2005 [41]	Kominski, 2005 [45]	Sharma, 2009 [43]	Stano, 2002 [42]	Total
1	Is the study population clearly described?	yes	no	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	5
2	Are competing alternatives clearly described?	yes	no	yes	no	yes	no	no	3
3	Is a well-defined research question posed in answerable form?	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	6
4	Is the economic study design appropriate to the stated objective?	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	7
5	Is the chosen time horizon appropriate in order to include relevant costs and consequences?	no	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	5
6	Is the actual perspective chosen appropriate?	no	no	yes	no	yes	no	no	2
7	Are all important and relevant costs for each alternative identified?	no	yes	yes	no	yes	no	no	3
8	Are all costs measured appropriately in physical units?	no	yes	yes	no	yes	no	no	3
9	Are costs valued appropriately?	no	no	yes	no	no	no	no	1
10	Are all important and relevant outcomes for each alternative identified?	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	6
11	Are all outcomes measured appropriately?	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	7
12	Are outcomes valued appropriately?	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	0
13	Is an incremental analysis of costs and outcomes of alternatives performed?	no	no	no	yes	no	no	yes	2
14	Are all future costs and outcomes discounted appropriately?^a	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
15	Are all important variables, whose values are uncertain, appropriately subjected to sensitivity analysis?	no	no	no	no	no	yes	no	1
16	Do the conclusions follow from the data reported?	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	7
17	Does the study discuss the generalizability of the results to other settings and patient/client groups?	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	6
18	Does the article indicate that there is no potential conflict of interest of study researcher(s) and funder(s)?	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	7
19	Are ethical and distributional issues discussed appropriately?	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	0
	Total	9	7	14	10	12	10	9

^anot applicable (i.e. studies did not project future costs or health outcomes)

N/A not applicable