Background: Economic evaluation as an integral part of health technology assessment is today mostly applied to established technologies. Evaluating health care innovations in their early states of development has recently attracted attention. However, while it offers a number of benefits, it...

Objectives: To critically examine the economic evidence on Cystic Fibrosis (CF) screening and to understand issues relating to the transferability of findings to the Australian context for policy decisions. Methods: A systematic literature search identified 25 economic studies with empirical...

Currently, most developed countries’ decisions about health-care policy must address a major challenge: the rapidly rising costs of health care. It is estimated that one third of this annual increment is due to the incorporation of health technology advances in medical practice. So the...

Objectives The aim of this study was to test the feasibility of estimating preference weights for all health states defined by the Child Health Utility 9D (CHU9D), a new generic measure of health related quality of life for children. This will allow the calculation of quality adjusted life years...

In the past, the individual using medical care was generally referred to as the "patient", with this word's connotations of an individual who was passive, forbearing and accepting. The emerging view is to look at the individual using medical care as a consumer, with this word's very different...

Increased concentration in the hospital industry has been a focus of recent antitrust review of the current wave of hospital mergers. As argued by Demsetz, the potential danger that increased concentration imposes on economic efficiency in any industry turns upon whether the change in...