Developing a cost template for a nurse-led stroke caregiver intervention program

Abstract

The purpose of this brief report was to estimate the program costs for the Telephone Assessment and Skill-building Kit (TASK) for stroke caregivers, in comparison with an Information, Support, and Referral (ISR) group. Using data from our pilot trial, we developed a cost template, accounting for both the costs of organizing and implementing the TASK intervention and ISR programs and costs of the caregiver's time involved. Mean costs per caregiver were estimated to be $421 in the TASK intervention group, compared with $286 in the ISR group. This difference was largely due to extended training time and longer durations of phone calls in the TASK group. In addition to reporting our findings, we highlighted the general process of properly identifying, measuring, and valuing resource use in a caregiver intervention and discussed several ways a cost template can inform the evaluation and decision-making processes in nurse-led programs.