Abstract
Palliative care, as with other health care services, is faced with the difficulty of competing for limited health care resources. Health care decision makers seek to maximize ‘value for money’ when selecting services to fund. The challenges for the palliative care community are to (a) demonstrate the cost effectiveness of its interventions in comparison to other health services and (b) provide evidence that the resources currently allocated are being used efficiently. Health economic evaluation can be conducted to support this. In this paper different economic approaches to evaluating health care services are introduced. Providing examples from (home based) palliative care we consider the opportunities to progress this work. We also describe the related challenges of capturing activity, costs, and outcomes. Although the very nature of this area of care presents unique methodological challenges that will need to be overcome, appropriate analyses will allow comparisons across the wider health sector and strengthen the argument for palliative care services.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 232-235 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | Progress in Palliative Care |
Volume | 21 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 15 Nov 2013 |
Bibliographical note
Acknowledgements:This work was originally presented by Dr Fliss Murtagh at the Cicely Saunders Institute's Palliative Home Care Conference in September 2012. The authors wish to thank Barbara Gomes for her generous contributions to this presentation, and Professor Lynne Turner-Stokes for her constructive comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.