In the one-year model, hospitalisations led to a gain of 0.00026 QALYs at an additional cost of $5,573, which resulted in an incremental cost per QALY gained with hospitalisation versus urgent clinic evaluation of $21,434,615.
In the 30-year model, hospitalisations led to a gain of 0.0016 QALYs at an additional cost of $5,557, which resulted in an incremental cost per QALY of $3,473,125.
In the long-term analysis, the cost-utility ratio approached the threshold of $50,000 per QALY when the 48-hour stroke risk approached 30% (it was much lower in the base case analysis at 0.6%). Variations in other inputs did not alter the incremental cost-utility ratio, which remained far above $100,000 in most scenarios. In the short-term analysis, hospitalisations was not cost-effective using both $50,000 and $100,000 per QALY thresholds.