A key challenge for evaluators and health system planners is the identification, measurement and valuation of resource use for economic evaluation. Accurately capturing all significant resource use is particularly difficult in the Australian
Identification, measurement and valuation of resource useEconomic evaluation of health care involves the systematic comparison of alternative interventions in terms of consequences (impacts on health and other outcomes) and costs (resource use) (Drummond, O'Brien et al. 1997). It provides information about which interventions are likely to maximise outcomes from available resources. There are two components to economic evaluation: identification, measurement and valuation of consequences; and identification, measurement and valuation of resource use.The appropriate approach to identifying, measuring and valuing resource use is to identify the opportunity costs of additional resources used. We are interested in the net impact on health system resources as a result of the intervention. This assessment of costs should be made at the margin: as a result of the intervention, what is the value of additional resources used, and what is the value of any additional resources freed up?There is a range of different approaches to economic evaluation. Economic evaluations can be undertaken as decision tree or Markov modelling studies, where the choice of interventions is set up in a decision tree framework and the resource use and outcomes for an average patient are assessed (Drummond, O'Brien et al. 1997). Other economic evaluations may involve detailed assessment of resource use in a clinical trial setting: collecting individual data on all patients in the control and intervention groups. Health system planners and decision makers may also undertake partial economic evaluations (costing studies), involving examination of the costs of different interventions without the comparison between alternatives, and the assessment of Measuring health system resource use for economic evaluation: a comparison of data sources