Focal points of research

My main focus of research is health economics and the use of health care services in affiliation with the following institutions:

  • Department for Simulation-based Learning, Stavanger University Hospital, Stavanger, Norway
  • SAFER (Stavanger Acute medicine Foundation of Education and Research), Stavanger, Norway.
  • Centre for Age-related Medicine, Stavanger University Hospital, Stavanger, Norway.
  • Centre for Old Age Psychiatry, Innlandet Hospital Trust, Norway.
  • Alcohol and Drugs Research Western Norway, Stavanger University Hospital, Stavanger,Norway.
  • Norwegian Centre for Movement Disorders, Stavanger University Hospital, Stavanger, Norway.

Focal points of research are:

Safer Births Bundle of Care (SBBC):

The Safer Births Bundle of Care (SBBC) was created to combat birth-related mortality in low- and middle-income countries, targeting intrapartum stillbirths, newborn and maternal deaths simultaneously. The bundle was developed in Tanzania, iteratively over a 10-year period, to improve the quality around birth. SBBC consists of four main components; 1) innovative simulation training methods and equipment, 2) strategies for data-guided continuous quality improvement (QI) efforts, 3) innovative clinical devices for fetal and newborn heart rate monitoring, and 4) processes to support sustainability and scalability.

The program evolved out of the Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) and Helping Mothers Survive Bleeding After Birth Complete (HMS-BABC) programmes.

My role is to lead the health economic evaluation of the program and to supervise a Tanzanian PhD student.

So far, this work has resulted in the following publications:

Cost-effectiveness of the „Helping Babies Breathe“ program in a missionary hospital in rural Tanzania. Vossius C, Lotto E, Lyanga S, Mduma E, Msemo G, PermanJ, Ersdal HL. PLoS One. 2014 Jul 9;9(7):e102080. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0102080. eCollection 2014

The impact of introducing ambulance and delivery fees in a rural hospital in Tanzania. Vossius C, Mduma E, Moshiro R, Mdoe P, Kvaløy JT, Kidanto H, Lyanga S, Ersdal H. BMC Health Services Research 2021 Jan. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-06107-x

Dementia:

From 2011 to 2022, I worked with the project Resource Use and Disease Course in Dementia (REDIC) that was performed according to a request by the Norwegian Directorate of Health. The aim was to evaluate the use of health and social services in primary and secondary health care and the extent of informal help that is provided to persons with dementia by family and friends. Based on these findings, the project should provide an estimate of the costs of dementia-related illness in Norway and identify factors predicting resource use  and costs. In addition, the report should explore health related quality of life and provide a projection of the future number of persons with dementia. A total of 5630 persons were included in the project. Of those, 2771 had dementia. Detailed data about resource use and costs were collected from 1940 participants.

As a follow-up of this work we followed one of the cohorts that consists of nearly 700 participants that were included at admission to nursing home. The aim of the REDIC-Nursing Home project (REDIC-NH) was to analyse the use of direct care in nursing home residents and to explore factors that are associated with increased use of direct care. Second, mortality at NH and factors predicting death should be examined.

Besides a number of scientific publications this work resulted in two reports to the Norwegian Directorate of Health. Both reports provide a summary in English.

Persons with long-term substance abuse:

As part of my clinical work at a so-called Addiction ward at one of the nursing homes in Stavanger we described the working mode of the addiction ward and the characteristics of the ward’s population from 2006 to 2009 regarding demographics, social background and substance abuse.

Further, we evaluated the costs of living at the ward as compared to the costs arising from the different health care and social services the ward’s residents received during the six months prior to admission.

The Stavanger Wet House. Vossius C, Testad I, Berge T, Nesvåg S. Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 2011;28(3/2011):279-82

The use of healthand social services in patients with long standing substance abuse. Vossius C, TestadI, Rune Skjæveland, Nesvåg S. BMC Health Serv Res 2013 May 22;13(1):185. doi: 10.1186/1472-6963-13-185; URL: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6963/13/185

Parkinson‘s disease:

My PhD thesis covers various health economic aspects of Parkinson’s disease as the costs of medical treatment, admission to nursing home, admission to hospital and quality of life.