ABSTRACT
The practice of economic evaluation in health care takes a number of forms, and most of these are defined in terms of the ways in which benefits are measured. When benefits are traded in the market a value is put on them automatically, since the buyer must consider that they are worth at least what she paid. The best way to think of the different economic evaluation techniques is as a spectrum, with cost–benefit analysis at one extreme, where benefits are valued in money terms, through cost-utility studies with benefits measured in some standard and comparable unit, to cost-effectiveness analysis, where outcomes are defined in natural units. Advocates of attempts to assess benefits in financial or utility measures stress that, without a standard and comparable system of measurement, it is difficult to compare outcomes of different types of intervention. Specialists in quality-of-life measurement understand that there are many dimensions of quality, measurement instruments deliberately avoid having a single overall score.
