Economic evaluations in healthcare: Basic concepts and classification

The growing burden of healthcare costs has created an urgent need to economically appraise health interventions in order to prioritise those which offer better value for money in the local context. The aim of this article is to provide sonic basic. principles of economic evaluations which will improve physicians understanding of the methodology involved in this type of analysis and will also help to show how their clinical practice relates to the economics of healthcare financing. Some of the main concepts describe is this paper include the definition and classification of economic evaluations in healthcare (i.e. Cost-minimization, cost-effectiveness, cost-utility and cost-benefit) and a brief description of a cost-effectiveness plane. (Rev Med Chile 2010; 138 (Sup! 2): 93-97).