ArticleHealth research policy and systems2025
Measuring impacts: a scoping review of healthcare impact evaluations.
Article in Health research policy and systems, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundWith the increasing use of the term "impact evaluation" in healthcare and the absence of an exhaustive review on this general theme, this research aims to map available evidence and methods associated with impact evaluations in healthcare by conducting a scoping review.
methodsThis exhaustive review included peer-reviewed studies of healthcare interventions with no restrictions on language or time of publication.
resultsIn total, 324 studies met the inclusion criteria from 4372 single registries retrieved from Medline, Embase, Scopus, WoS and Econlit in August 2024, with no time restriction. Only ex-post studies were identified; as expected from guidelines, most studies used counterfactuals (58%) and only 7% did not use any comparison. Furthermore, natural experiments or quasi-experiments were the most applied designs (37%), followed by observational (26%) and experimental (17%) designs.
conclusionsImpact evaluations of healthcare interventions seem to be predominantly associated with methods of strong comparison (counterfactuals) designs as seen in guidelines; however, there are exceptions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion 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 OpenQuestion graph.