ABSTRACT

As the costs of health care continue to grow, more of an emphasis is placed on understanding the sources of cost increases and examining techniques to control the growth. While individuals consuming health care want the most recent and frequently most expensive advances available to them, this may be at odds with those providing and financing health care. The financers and providers frequently need to make decisions on how to provide health care to the most people in which the most amount of good is done for the smallest amount of resources consumed. That is, they are interested in providing care in the most efficient manner so that they are getting the most bang for the buck. This requires an understanding of the value of interventions so that those making decisions can do so rationally while incorporating both the costs and outcomes associated with new interventions. A current approach that allows for the comparison of the relative value of different interventions in health care is costeffectiveness analysis. The increased reliance on cost effectiveness results for informing decisions related to the provision and financing of health care places more importance on understanding the social, functional and economic burden of illness and the cost and outcomes of interventions.