Cost-effectiveness of a patient-reported outcome-based remote monitoring and alert intervention for early detection of critical recovery after joint replacement: A randomised controlled trial

While the effectiveness of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) as an intervention to impact patient pathways has been established for cancer care, it is unknown for other indications. We assessed the cost-effectiveness of a PROM-based monitoring and alert intervention for early detection of critical recovery paths following hip and knee replacement. The cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is based on a multicentre randomised controlled trial encompassing 3,697 patients with hip replacement and 3,110 patients with knee replacement enrolled from 2019 to 2020 in 9 German hospitals. The analysis was conducted with a subset of 546 hip and 492 knee replacement cases with longitudinal cost data from 24 statutory health insurances. Patients were randomised 1:1 to a PROM-based remote monitoring and alert intervention or to a standard care group. All patients were assessed at 12-months post-surgery via digitally collected PROMs. Patients within the intervention group were additionally assessed at 1-, 3-, and 6-months post-surgery to be contacted in case of critical recovery paths. For the effect evaluation, a PROM-based composite measure (PRO-CM) was developed, combining changes across various PROMs in a single index ranging from 0 to 100. The PRO-CM included 6 PROMs focused on quality of life and various aspects of physical and mental health. The primary outcome was the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER). The intervention group showed incremental outcomes of 2.54 units PRO-CM (95% confidence interval (CI) [0.93, 4.14]; p = 0.002) for patients with hip and 0.87 (95% CI [-0.94, 2.67]; p = 0.347) for patients with knee replacement. Within the 12-months post-surgery period the intervention group had less costs of 376.43€ (95% CI [-639.74, -113.12]; p = 0.005) in patients with hip, and 375.50€ (95% CI [-767.40, 16.39]; p = 0.060) in patients with knee replacement, revealing a dominant ICER for both procedures. However, it remains unclear which step of the multistage intervention contributes most to the positive effect. The intervention significantly improved patient outcomes at lower costs in patients with hip replacements when compared with standard care. Further it showed a nonsignificant cost reduction in knee replacement patients. This reinforces the notion that PROMs can be utilised as a cost-effective instrument for remote monitoring in standard care settings. Registration: German Register for Clinical Studies (DRKS) under DRKS00019916.