Health care economics cost-utility analysis

Health economics is concerned with the cost and consequences of decisions made about the care of patients. It therefore involves the identification, measurement, and valuation of both the costs and the consequences. The process is complex and is an inexact science, The approaches to economic evaluation include (1) cost minimization, (2) cost benefit, (3) cost effectiveness, and (4) cost utility analysis (Table 13-2). 

Nowadays a drug company has not only to show its paymasters - governments, insurers and so on - that its new prodnct is safe and works, but also that it is cost-effective. In Anstralia, this has been spelled out in legislation. Since 1993, any drng submitted for approval must be accompanied not only by the resnlts of clinical trials bnt also by an economic impact analysis. In 1999, the United Kingdom set np a National Institnte for Clinical Excellence (NICE) to advise the National Health Service on the cost-effectiveness of health care technologies. Other countries ask formally or informally for pharmacoeconomic analysis. Economic impacts can be measured in a variety of ways, for example, cost-effectiveness, cost-utility or full cost-benefit stndies. 

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