Establishing a Reference Unit Costs catalogue for the optimized evaluation and planning of mental healthcare in Vienna (STREAMLINE)

Principal investigator: Judit Simon (MUW)

This third-party funded project is part of a WWTF project in cooperation with the Medical University of Vienna (MUW) - Centre for Public Health/Department of Health Economics, Gesundheit Österreich GmbH, AT; Universidad Loyola Andaluciá, ES.
Duration: April 2023 to December 2025

Content: Health economic evaluations require valid data of resource use and cost data of all relevant services. Standardised cost data are currently lacking in Austria. In an EU project (PECUNIA) a method for standardisation was developed. Within the framework of the STREAMLINE project under the direction of the Department of Health Economics (Med Univ. Vienna), the methods available from the PECUNIA project are to be tested for the area of mental health care (focus Vienna) and concrete 'unit costs' for individual services are to be determined. The AIHTA takes over the piloting of health care services of child and adolescent psychiatric care.

Method:

• Identification of relevant services in the healthcare, social care, educational and justice sector.
• Coding according to the 'DESDE' system developed in the PECUNIA project.
• Determination of unit costs based on a top down or bottom-up approach using the EXCEL tool developed in the PECUNA project and feeding into an international unit cost reference database.

Link to the project on the homepage of the Medical University of Vienna: Link