The economics of preventing hospital-acquired infections is most often described in general terms. The underlying concepts and mechanisms are rarely made explicit but should be understood for research and policy-making. We define the key economic concepts and specify an illustrative model that uses hypothetical data to identify how two related questions might be addressed: 1) how much should be...

Patrik Andlin-Sobocki, Bengt Jönsson, Hans-Ulrich Wittchen and Jes Olesen Stockholm Health Economics, Stockholm, Sweden and Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; Center for Health Economics, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden; Institute of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden,...

The Cardiac Insufficiency Bisoprolol Study (CIBIS) demonstrates that, for patients with heart failure of different aetiologies, administration of the beta 1-adrenoceptor blocker bisoprolol as an adjuvant to the standard therapy leads to a significant avoidance of hospital admissions. A pharmacoeconomic analysis of the results of the CIBIS was conducted for the Federal Republic of Germany, and w...

Investigating the pharmacoeconomic impact of any diagnostic or therapeutic intervention in the Irish healthcare setting is currently compromised by the lack of detailed cost data. Consequently, we conducted a number of microcosting studies in the areas of acute myocardial infarction, cardiac failure and HIV, from the hospital perspective. The results of these microcosting studies were compared ...

Dr Gulliford is to be congratulated on reporting the first examination of the relationship between the availability of primary care doctors and population health in England. His work follows the calculations in the USA by Starfield that each extra family physician is associated with a reduction of deaths of 34 US citizens per 100 000 population, a finding not replicated for specialists. His fin...