Willingness to pay in arthritis: a Danish contribution

Objective. To explore the use of willingness-to-pay (WTP) methods with resp ect to an antagonist of tumour necrosis factor as an antirheumatic drug. Methods. One hundred and fifteen rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients at a te rtiary care centre in Odense, Denmark were interviewed using two WTP approa ches, the contingent ranking and double-hounded (closed-ended) methods. Results. The average closed-ended WTP value was DKr581 and the average cont ingent ranking WTP was DKr643. There were no statistically significant diff erences in the WTP estimates between the two methods. Conclusion. It is feasible to use these methods with arthritis patients. If , as suggested in a number of recent reviews, a major effort is to be put i nto undertaking economic appraisals of arthritis programmes, then this shou ld include more cost-benefit studies using WTP approaches of the kind illus trated in this paper.