Age- and sex-specific Canadian utility norms, based on the 2013–2014 Canadian Community Health Survey

Jason R Guertin, David Feeny, Jean-Eric Tarride

Although many Canadian studies have provided disease-specific or patient group-specific utility scores, the utility score norms currently available for the general Canadian population are outdated. Canadian guideline recommendations for the economic evaluation of health technologies advocate for utilities reflecting those of the general population and for stratified analyses when results are heterogeneous; as such, there is also a need for age-, sex- and jurisdiction-specific utility score norms. We used data from the 2013-2014 Canadian Community Health Survey. We used the Health Utilities Index Mark 3 to calculate utility scores. We estimated means (with 95% confidence intervals [CIs]) and medians (with interquartile ranges [IQRs]) for utility scores. In addition to Canadian-level measures, we stratified all utility score norms by respondents' age, sex, and province or territory of residence. We weighted respondents' answers and computed 95% CIs using sampling weights and bootstrap weights provided by Statistics Canada to extrapolate the study findings to the Canadian population. Respondents to the 2013-2014 Canadian Community Health Survey represented 30 014 589 community-dwelling Canadians 12 years of age and older (98% of the Canadian population); half of the respondents were female (50.6%), and the weighted average age was 44.8 (95% CI 44.7-44.9) years. The mean and median self-reported utility scores for Canadians were estimated at 0.863 (95% CI 0.861-0.865) and 0.927 (IQR 0.838-0.972), respectively. This study provides utility score norms for several age-, sex-and jurisdiction-specific strata in Canada. These results will be useful for future cost-utility analyses and could serve as benchmark values for comparisons with future studies.