Users' Guides to the Medical Literature
Guyatt G, Rennie D, Meade MO, Cook DJ
Part G Moving from Evidence to Action
Chapter 22.1. Economic Analysis
Michael Drummond, Ron Goeree, Paul Moayyedi, Mitch Levine
Costs also depend on how care is organized, and organization of care varies widely across...
Topics Discussed:
application of economic analysis (cost-effectiveness), clinical decision making, cost effectiveness, decision making, economic analysis (cost-effectiveness), health care costs, measures of outcome, resource use
Excerpt:
"In one sense, cost is, like physiologic function, quality of
life, morbid events such as stroke and myocardial infarction, and
death, simply another outcome for clinicians to consider
when assessing the effects of therapy. Although there are fundamental
similarities between cost and other outcomes, there are also important
differences that we will now describe.Although few would deny the importance of cost considerations
in setting health care policy, the relevance of costs in individual
patient decision making remains controversial. Some would argue—taking
an extreme of what can be called a deontologic approach to distributive
justice—that clinicians' only responsibility should
be to best meet the needs of the individual under their care. An
alternate view—philosophically consequentialist or utilitarian—would
contend that even in individual decision making, clinicians should
take a broader social view. In this broader view, the effect on
others of allocating resources to a particular patient's
care would bear on the decision...."
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