Cost-effectiveness and Return on Investment of a Nationwide Case-Finding Program for Familial Hypercholesterolemia in Children in the Netherlands

Importance: The Netherlands is one of the few countries that has a long-term history of active screening for familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), enabling health-economic analyses. 

Objective: To investigate cost-effectiveness and the return on investment (ROI) of a nationwide cascade case-finding and preventive treatment program starting with identification of FH in children and treatment, from both a societal and health care perspective. 

Design, Setting, and Participants: Cascade case-finding and early preventive treatment were modeled to simulate the progression of disease and costs of 10-year-olds suspected of having heterozygous FH over a lifetime. The model consisted of 3 health states: alive without coronary heart disease (CHD), alive with CHD, and deceased. Mendelian randomization analysis was used to quantify the risk of a first CHD event as a function of age and total lifetime exposure to low-density lipoprotein cholesterol. Cost-effectiveness was defined as 20000 ($21800) per QALYs (quality-adjusted life-years) gained, using incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs). All future benefits and costs were discounted annually by 1.5% and 4%, respectively. 

Interventions: The study compared 2 strategies: (1) cascade screening and initiation of treatment with statins in children (mean age, 10 years) and (2) no screening, later detection, and treatment. Main Outcomes and Measures: Outcome of interest included cost, detection, and successful treatment of FH in terms of life-years gained and QALYs. The clinical and cost outputs for each model in the 2 scenarios (early detection and treatment and later detection and treatment) were totaled to determine the overall cost-effectiveness and ROI attributed to implementation of the Dutch FH program. 

Results: In this model constructed to simulate the progression of FH in 1000 hypothetical 10-year-olds, from a health care perspective, the program would gain 2.53 QALYs per person, at an additional cost of 23365 ($25468) (both discounted). These equated to an ICER of 9220 ($10050) per QALY gained. From the societal perspective, the detection and treatment program were cost saving over a lifetime compared with no cascade screening for FH. The ROI for the detection and treatment program for FH in children was 8.37 ($9.12). 

Conclusions and Relevance: The findings of this study suggest that the early detection and treatment program for FH in children may offer a good value for investment, being both health and cost saving. The findings and interpretations are conditional on assumptions inherent in the health economic model.