Problem: Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic condition, often with poor prognosis. Although there are NICE guidelines for managing IPF patients, care has varied across England; it has depended on how a clinic’s services are set up and what local resources are available. Our clients wanted to support local specialist centres as they document how their clinics managed IPF patients, how local pathways varied from the NICE benchmark care, and estimate affordability of providing care to patients.

Approach: We generated a gold-standard benchmark pathway for IPF patients based on the NICE guidelines and published literature using our pathway mapping tool, Dots. With our client we designed and conducted structured interviews with clinicians and service managers to explore how their IPF patients are managed and map out local pathways and resource use. Finally, we estimated the costs of care and compared it to our benchmark national pathway using the Dots.

Impact: All of the clinics were given their results so they could understand how their IPF pathways compared to the benchmark and to other clinics, both clinically and in cost-wise. It is anticipated that results could inform the development of a national tariff, as the estimated costs of providing care was over 40% more than currently reimbursed.

 

Related publications

Hill C, Nasr R, Fisher MI, et. al. Estimated cost and payment by results (PBR) tariff reimbursement for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis services across 14 specialist providers in England. British Thoracic Society Winter Meeting, London UK. 5th December 2014 MRC-2731