A shortcoming of many economic evaluations is that they do not include all medical costs in life-years gained (also termed indirect medical costs). One of the reasons for this is the practical difficulties in the estimation of these costs. While some methods have been proposed to estimate...

Background: Obesity is a major contributor to the overall burden of disease (also reducing life expectancy) and associated with high medical costs due to obesity-related diseases. However, obesity prevention, while reducing obesity-related morbidity and mortality, may not result in overall...

Which costs and benefits to consider in economic evaluations of healthcare interventions remains an area of much controversy. Unrelated medical costs in life-years gained is an important cost category that is normally ignored in economic evaluations, irrespective of the perspective chosen for...

The friction-cost method has been put forward as an alternative to the human-capital method as it allows more realistic estimates of productivity costs to be calculated for use in economic evaluations. The possibility of replacement of (long-term) absentees is at the heart of the friction-cost...

This paper compares several applied valuation methods for including informal care in economic evaluations of healthcare programmes: the proxy good method; the opportunity cost method; the contingent valuation method (CVM); conjoint measurement (CM); and valuation of health effects in terms of...

Economic evaluations have become an important and much used tool in aiding decision makers in deciding on reimbursement or implementation of new healthcare technologies. Nevertheless, the impact of economic evaluations on reimbursement decisions has been modest; results of economic evaluations...

Background: Waiting for care is common in many countries as a result of supply-side rationing. The effects that waiting has on patients and their environment have not received much attention thus far. We discuss the literature and present the results of a study on patient experiences with...

In economic evaluation of healthcare programmes both QOL and productivity of patients are aspects to be studied. Normally, the former is part of the measurement of the effectiveness of the programme and the latter is part of the measurement of its costs. In this paper we highlight the...

Interest in the use of economic evaluations in Korea as an aid for healthcare decision makers has been growing rapidly since the financial crisis of the Korean National Health Insurance fund and the separation in 2000 of the roles of prescribing and dispensing drugs. The Korean Health Insurance...