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Valuing care recipient and family caregiver time: A comparison of methods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2008

Denise N. Guerriere ,
Jennifer E. Tranmer ,
Wendy J. Ungar ,
Venika Manoharan  and
Peter C. Coyte
Denise N. Guerriere
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Jennifer E. Tranmer
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
Wendy J. Ungar
Affiliation:
University of Toronto and The Hospital for Sick Children
Venika Manoharan
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Peter C. Coyte
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to compare the approaches used for valuing family caregiver and care recipient time devoted to providing and receiving care.

Methods: Valuation approaches were operationalized within a cohort of cystic fibrosis care recipients (n = 110). Base-case analyses, grounded in human capital theory, applied earnings estimates to caregiving time to impute the market value of time lost from labor. Unpaid labor and leisure time was valued with a replacement cost (homemaker's wage rate). Total time costs were computed and sensitivity analyses were conducted to describe the effects of alternative valuation methods on total costs.

Results: The mean time cost per care recipient–caregiver dyad over 28 days was $2,026CAD. The majority (76 percent) of time costs were due to losses from unpaid labor and leisure time. Varying the valuation of paid labor time did not result in significantly different total time costs (p = .0877). However, varying the method of valuing unpaid labor and leisure time did significantly affect total costs (p < .0001).

Conclusions: Care recipients and caregivers primarily lost time from unpaid labor and leisure in the treatment of cystic fibrosis. Moreover, when the above losses were aggregated, the method of valuation greatly influenced overall results. The findings clearly indicate that omitting caregiver and unpaid labor and leisure costs may result in an inaccurate assessment of ambulatory and home-based healthcare programs.

Keywords

Family caregivingCystic fibrosisTime costs
Type
GENERAL ESSAYS
Information
International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 52 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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