Cost-Effectiveness
Definition
Cost-effectiveness is concerned with improving the performance of a health care system by ensuring the resources available to a health care system are used in their most productive way. This can only be achieved through careful consideration of the full consequences and opportunity costs of introducing a new health care program in the context or setting in which it is to be introduced. Appropriate evaluation methods must be employed to accommodate this information and avoid simplifying assumptions that threaten the evaluation’s validity.
Description
Economic evaluation has been defined as “ensuring that the value of what is gained from an activity outweighs the value of what has to be sacrificed” (Wiliams 1983). Hence, economic evaluation reflects the fundamental principles of economics that (1) resources are scarce, (2) choices are made between alternative uses of resources, and (3) a particular deployment of resources involves forgoing the benefits generated from...
References and Readings
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