EBN NOTEBOOK
Critical appraisal of cost-effectiveness and cost-utility studies in health care
Department of Health Sciences, University of York; York, UK
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Increasingly, cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analyses (broadly referred to as cost-effectiveness analyses [CEAs]) are used to inform resource allocation decisions in health care. National bodies, such as the UK National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), prefer CEAs to cost–benefit and cost-minimisation studies.
CEAs assess value for money by relating the costs and consequences (effects) of 2 or more health technologies. Ascertaining value for money is important since healthcare sectors have fixed budgets. This means that a decision made in favour of one technology is associated with an opportunity cost in the form of the health technologies now forgone. In our previous Notebook,1 we gave an overview of what economic evaluation involves and why such research is important.
Like all forms of research evidence, CEAs need to be critically appraised for validity, clinical importance, and applicability before they are given a "weight" in decision-making processes. The aim of this Notebook
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
