Background Public hospitals have experienced budget constraints but as demand for admissions has been growing at the same time, occupancy levels have been increasing. As emergency and urgent admissions are given priority, the effect has been not just longer waiting times and larger waiting lists...

This discussion paper provides an introduction to the estimation of benefits in economic evaluation. The concept of benefits, as something worth making a sacrifice to obtain, is explained. The issue of what the benefits of health care is discussed. Methods for the identification of benefits are...

While there are many published economic evaluations of health care, few allow the reader to understand the practice of costing health care programmes. The aim of this document is to fill this gap. In the document, the principles of how to cost health care for economic evaluation are outlined....

Economic evaluation is a topic of increasing interest in the health sector. As resource scarcity and opportunity cost, the relevance of economic to decision makers should increase. However, those who fund and support research are becoming more concerned to make it accountable and relevant. Hence...

Since the early 1980s it has been identified that even though economic evaluation is considered useful by economist it is not widely used by health care decision-makers. One of the ways to close the gap is to involve decision-makers in the process. This project was set up to gain a better...