Handling missing values in cost-effectiveness analyses that use data from cluster randomised trials

Abstract: Public policy-makers use cost-effectiveness analyses (CEA) to decide which health and social care interventions to provide. Appropriate methods have not been developed for handling missing data in complex settings, such as for CEA that use data from cluster randomised trials (CRTs). We present a multilevel multiple imputation (MI) approach that recognises when missing data have a hierarchical structure, and is compatible with the bivariate multilevel models used to report cost-effectiveness. We contrast the multilevel MI approach with single-level MI and complete case analysis in a CEA alongside a CRT. The paper highlights the importance of adopting a principled approach to handling missing values in settings with complex data structures.