Harkness Project Title: Assessing Value in Health Care Delivery Systems: Use of Discrete Choice Experiments to Elicit Patient Preferences
Placement: Duke University
Mentors: Peter Ubel, M.D., Professor, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
Kevin Schulman, M.D., Professor, Duke Clinical Research Institute
Biography at time of Harkness Fellowship: Axel Mühlbacher, Dr. rer. oec., a 2010-11 Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice, is professor of health economics and health care management at Hochschule Neubrandenberg. His research focuses on health economics and integrated care. Past positions include assistant professor at Technische Universitat Berlin and research fellow, German Coordinating Agency of Public Health, Albert-Ludwig Universitat Freiburg. He has also served on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Health as academic advisor to the steering committee, "Measures to create a new definition of 'requiring care,' and a new uniform instrument of evaluation" for the National Association of Statutory Health Funds. Mühlbacher is author of 17 peer-reviewed publications and holds a M.Sc. in business administration from Eberhard-Karls Universitat (Tübingen) and a Ph.D in economics from the Technical University Berlin.
Project: Mühlbacher’s project aimed to provide health care policymakers and decision-makers with a comprehensive assessment of patients’ views on the relative value of coordinated care. The project had a qualitative and quantitative phase. In the qualitative phase, focus groups and interviews were conducted with patients regarding their preferences for different aspects of coordinated care. In the quantitative phase of the project, a discrete choice experiment was conducted, wherein roughly 700 patient participants were presented with a scenario and given a choice between possible coordinated care interventions. Their choices were analyzed based upon the characteristics of the interventions they chose.
Current position: Profssor, IGM Institute Health Economics and Health Care Management, Hochschule Neubrandenburg (Updated July 2013)
Email: [email protected]
Selected Publications:
Mühlbacher A., Stoll M., Mahlich J., Nübling M. Evaluating the Concordance of Physician Judgments and Patient Preferences on AIDS/HIV Therapy: A Discrete Choice Experiment, Health Economics Review; 2013, 3:30.
Juhnke, C., Mühlbacher, A. Patient-centredness in integrated healthcare delivery Systems -- needs, expectations and priorities for organized health care systems. International Journal of Integrated Care, 2013; Volume 13, issue: 4.
Mühlbacher, A. ,Bethge, S. Preferences of overweight and obese patients for weight loss programs: a discrete choice experiment, International Journal of Integrated Care, 2013 Vol 13, July September 2013 13:e034.
Mühlbacher, A., Stoll, M., Mahlich, J., Nübling, M. Patient preferences for HIV/AIDS Therapy -- a discrete choice experiment. Health Economics Review, 2013; 11;3(1):14.
Severin, F., Schmidtke, J., Mühlbacher, A., Rogowski, WH. Eliciting preferences for priority setting in genetic testing: a pilot study comparing best-worst scaling and discrete choice experiments, European Journal of Human Genetics, 2013; 21(11):1202-8.
Mühlbacher, A., Juhnke, C. Patients Preferences versus Physicians Judgments: Does it Make a difference in health care decision-making? Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, 2013; 11(3):163-180.
Johnson, F.R., Lancsar, E., Marshall, D., Kilambi, V., Mühlbacher, A., Regier, D., Bresnahan, B., Kanninen, B., Bridges, J.F.P. (2013): Constructing Experimental Designs for Discrete Choice Experiments: Report of the ISPOR Conjoint Analysis Experimental Design Task Force. Value in Health, 2013 Volume 16:3-13.
Bridges, F.P., Kinter, E. T., Rudolph, I., Schmeding, A., Mühlbacher, A., Can patients diagnosed with schizophrenia complete choice-based conjoint analysis tasks? Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, 2011; 4(4):267-75.
Mühlbacher, A., Nübling, M. (2011): Analysis of physicians’ perspectives versus patients’ preferences: direct assessment and discrete choice experiments in the therapy of multiple myeloma. In: The European Journal of Health Economics, Volume 12, Number 3, S. 193-203.
Bridges, J., Cohen, J., Grist, P., Mühlbacher, A. (2010): International Experience with Comparative Effectiveness Research: Case Studies from England/Wales and Germany. In: Advances in Health Economics & Health Services Research, Volume 22:29-50.