Nancy Devlin

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City Health Economics Centre
Nancy Devlin Professor of Health
Economics n.j.devlin_at_city.ac.uk
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Economic evaluation of CAM

• This session aims to
• Introduce the main principles and methods of
  economic evaluation in health care
• Consider the challenges that CAM pose for
  economic evaluation.

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Economic Evaluation

• A set of techniques used to weigh up the benefits
  and costs of alternative options.

• Efficiency and value for money
• Results inform decision-making

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Principles of economic evaluation

• Opportunity cost
• Every spent involves giving up the benefits
  (e.g. improved health) of using that money in
  other ways.
• Focussing on the margin
• What are the changes in health? What are the
  changes in resource use?

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Costs

• From whose perspective?
• Relative to what?
• Identifying, measuring and valuing resource use.
• A micro-approach to costing
• Costs q x p.
• Staff consumables equipment shared
  institutional costs patient costs non-health
  sector costs

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Benefits
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Economic evaluation of CAM challenges

• Effectiveness evidence
• Standardisation of treatment(care) protocols
  generalisability of cost and benefit data

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Economic evaluation of CAM issues

• Orthodox measures of health-related outcome
  (QALYs) may be too restrictive.
• Patients may have preferences regarding the
  process of care (not just outcomes)

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Resources

• Drummond, M.F. et al (1997) Methods for the
  economic evaluation of health care programmes.
  Oxford University Press (2nd edition)
• Kobelt, G. (2002) Health economics an
  introduction to economic evaluation. London
  Office for Health Economics.
• Kielhorn, A., von der Schulenberg, J.M. (2000)
  The health economics handbook. Adis
  International.