Health care economics

An international, unmoderated discussion forum for those with MCS who wish to move forward in understanding and coping with MCS. Issues addressed include family and social medical research health care economic workplace educational political environmental advocacy, legal accommodations lifestyle and government. To access http //www.egroups.com/group/MCS-CI-exile or hhtp //home.wtal.de/nodi/MCS-CI-exile/. 

Operational metrics must be developed that will facilitate the assessment of the effects of sleep loss and fatigue on key outcomes such as patient health and safety, education effectiveness, resident health and professionalism, and health care economics. (See Table 1.)... 

Feldstein PJ. 1999- Health Care Economics, 5th ed. Albany, NY Delmar Publishers. 

As in other areas of health care, economics is a driving force in the treatment of the substance-use disorders. 

Feldstein PJ. 1983. Health Care Economics, 2nd edition. Wiley New York. 

Gadelha, C.A.G., Costa, L.S., Santos de Varge Maldonado, J.M., Barbosa, P.R. Vargas, M.A. (2013) The health care economic-industrial complex concepts and general characteristics. Health, 5 (10), 1607-21. 

Economic evaluation is an assessment of the probable benefit or reward of a proposed course of action, relative to other choices. Although the benefit usually takes the form of a financial return, in environmental management, transportation (qv), health care, and other social areas, the benefit may be a social gain instead. Some method is then developed to translate the social gain into a monetary equivalent. The discussion herein is limited to the financial return expected from some type of production or service activity. 

The commercialization of developments in biotechnology will require a new breed of chemical engineer, one with a solid foundation in the life sciences as well as in process engineering principles. This engineer will be able to bring iimovative and economic solutions to problems in health care delivery and in the large-scale implementation of advances in molecular biology. 

The proceeding chapters give wimess of an overwhelming scientific development. Antiviral intervention has become a standard, and the worldwide availability of this innovation is perceived as a humanitarian matter of course with a value of its own. However, such an important therapy progress has to be seen in competition with other allocations of scarce funds. Health care resources are Umited - in one country more than in another, but in principle funds invested to antiretroviral intervention will not be available for prevention of HIV/AIDS or for the cure of other diseases. This fundamental scarcity calls for a rational utilization of existing resources and a scientific calculation of the socio-economic impact of antiretroviral intervention. 

Does this call for a cancellation of antiviral interventions Definitely not But it calls for a courageous long-term analysis of the COl of AIDS and of the cost-ejfectiveness of certain interventions, and it calls for the political will to reallocate public budgets towards the health care sector, as the highest socio-economic costs are most likely still to come. 

Rice DP, Hodgson TA, Kopstein AN (1985) The economic costs ofUlness a replication and update. Health Care Financ Rev 7 61-80... 

Over time, of course, such awareness has continued to grow, although so too has the realization that it should not be cost that drives macro or micro decision-making, but cost-effectiveness. That is, the health-care system needs to achieve a good balance between the resources it uses (the costs) and the outcomes it achieves (the effectiveness). More recent developments, such as the establishment of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, make abundantly clear both the enduring relevance of economic considerations when deciding how to use health service resources and the pervasive need to balance economic with clinical (and related) objectives. 

The production of welfare approach assumes that the final outcomes of a mental health-care intervention will be influenced ( produced ) by the nature of the services provided, the types, levels and mixes of resources employed, the social environment of the care setting and other non-resource factors. This core theme of the production of welfare model is obviously not built up from economic theory as such, but it is a logical corollary of theory and evidence from psychology, psychiatry and certain other disciplines. However, the formalization of the links between intervention characteristics, resource inputs and patient and family outcomes owes much to economic theories of cost and production relations and their... 

The simplest economic theories assume— somewhat unrealistically—that markets work sufficiendy well to ensure that society s scarce resources are allocated efficiendy. Of course, few markets are as well-behaved as in the elementary textbook, but nevertheless market forces can often be relied upon to allocate goods and services reasonably well between competing demands. If this is the case, then the need for economic evaluation of the costs and outcomes flowing from alternative uses of scarce resources is lessened. Mental health-care services in Britain are purchased and provided within internal markets (quasi-markets) within the state sector (mainly), and these muted market forces have clearly had some influence over allocations. Market forces have a more overt role in countries such as the USA, strongly influencing who obtains what service and at what cost to different parties. However, it is difficult to imagine circumstances in which techniques such as... 

Beecham J (1995). Collecting and estimating costs. In Knapp MRJ, ed. T e Economic Evaluation of Mental Health Care. Aldershot Arena,... 

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