The influence of economic evaluation studies on decision making.

Complexity and reflexivity: Two important issues for economic evaluation in health care

“…Interest in economic evaluation of health care programmes and technologies has increased considerably since the early 1990s (Hoffmann & Graf von der Schulenburg, 2000;Soto, 2002). However, investigations have shown that the influence of economic evaluations on health care decision-making is rather limited.…”

“…However, investigations have shown that the influence of economic evaluations on health care decision-making is rather limited. A number of barriers to the use of economic information have been identified and appear to be international, including questions about reliability and relevance of economic evaluations (Drummond et al, 2003;Hoffmann & Graf von der Schulenburg, 2000;Van Velden, Severens, & Novak, 2005). The complexities of economic evaluations pose particular problems because it allows more analyst discretion than clinical trials (Drummond, 1998;Reinhardt, 1997;Sheldon, 1996;Soto, 2002).…”

Using pharmacoeconomics for policy making: is rational decision making enhanced by applying thresholds for cost-effectiveness?

“…Apart from these methodological drawbacks, the interpretation of the results of economic evaluations by policy makers can also pose problems [10,11]. This is partly due to the aggregated nature of the outcome of a pharmacoeconomic analysis.…”

Health economic evaluation: in need of more analytical rigor or more practical relevance?

“…In an era of limited healthcare budgets, this approach can be more useful than other aspects of health-technology assessment, which simply assess the effectiveness of a health technology by only offering information on whether it is clinically beneficial without any consideration of cost. It is not surprising, therefore, that economic evaluation during the last 10 years has become increasingly important in healthcare decision-making [2][3][4][5]. This growing influence is reflected clearly by both the rapid expansion of the international literature and by the introduction of national health-technology assessment agencies in a number of countries, which now require formal evidence that technologies represent good value for money before they are approved for use in the healthcare system.…”