ArticleApplied health economics and health policy2026
Estimating System-Wide Healthcare Costs Using a Health System Model: Application to the Thanzi La Onse Model of Malawi.
Article in Applied health economics and health policy, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- System-wide investments generate health and enhance HIV, TB and malaria control in Malawi.Nature communications · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
21 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesModelling approaches that consider system-wide delivery platforms rather than single diseases can be instrumental in economic evaluation and forward-looking policy formulation. This study develops a costing approach tailored to the Thanzi La Onse (TLO) model of Malawi's healthcare system, with general applicability to other health system models.
methodsWe developed a mixed-method costing approach to estimate the total cost of healthcare delivery (excluding high-level administrative costs) in Malawi using the TLO model, from a healthcare provider perspective. Through iterative adjustments of key parameters, we aligned model-based estimates as closely as possible with real-world expenditure and budget data. Costs were projected for 2023-2030 under alternative scenarios of health system capacity.
resultsA comparison with expenditure and budget data suggests our costing method is broadly reliable for the conditions captured by the model, though some mismatches remain owing to data limitations and definitional inconsistencies. Under current system capacity, total healthcare delivery costs for 2023-2030 were estimated at 2.83 billion US dollars [95% uncertainty interval (UI), $2.80-$2.87 billion], excluding non-medical infrastructure and administrative costs, averaging $390.98 million [$385.92-$396.71 million] annually or $16.89 [$16.75-$17.08] per capita. Scenario analysis highlighted strong interdependencies within the health system. Improving consumable availability alone increased consumables costs by 4.63%, while expanding human resources for health (HRH) alone increased them by 1.43%. When both HRH and consumable availability were expanded together, consumable costs rose by 5.93%, a combined effect larger than either change alone, illustrating how bottlenecks in one component constrain the impact of improvements in another.
conclusionsMixed-method costing using health system models is a feasible and robust method to estimate and forecast healthcare delivery costs. Clarifying assumptions and limitations can improve their utility for economic analyses and evidence-based planning in the health sector.
Indexed as
Identifiers
42069854What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.