Ross J
Westmead Hospital, New South Wales.
Health Policy. 1995 Feb;31(2):103-10. doi: 10.1016/0168-8510(94)00671-7.
Decision making about the alternative uses of health care resources is an issue of critical concern for governments and administrators in all health care systems. While many factors need to be taken into consideration when making these decisions, economic evaluation can help to determine the relative efficiency of different choices. Research in various countries suggests that economic evaluation is not being used by health care decision makers to the extent that health economists think that it should be. Interest in the use of economic evaluation is increasing in Australia but, to date, there has been no Australian research which looks at its use from the point of view of its potential users--the decision makers. This study fills that gap. It was found that there was a high level of awareness of economic evaluation among the group of decision makers interviewed and that some had used it in their decision making. However decisions often have to be made quickly and take into account factors other than efficiency, hence limiting the use of economics. Other problems limiting its use were availability of data and lack of expertise. Those interviewed suggested a number of ways in which the problems they identified could be overcome. In particular, they recommended that researchers doing economic evaluations should be more responsive to the needs of the decision makers using them.
医疗保健资源的不同用途的决策，是所有医疗保健系统中的政府和管理人员极为关切的问题。在做出这些决策时，虽然需要考虑许多因素，但经济评估有助于确定不同选择的相对效率。各国的研究表明，医疗保健决策者对经济评估的使用程度，并未达到卫生经济学家认为应有的程度。在澳大利亚，对经济评估使用的兴趣正在增加，但迄今为止，还没有澳大利亚的研究从其潜在用户——决策者的角度审视其使用情况。本研究填补了这一空白。研究发现，接受访谈的决策者群体对经济评估的认知程度很高，并且有些人在决策中使用了它。然而，决策往往必须迅速做出，而且要考虑效率以外的因素，因此限制了经济学的应用。限制其应用的其他问题是数据的可得性和专业知识的缺乏。接受访谈者提出了一些可以克服他们所发现问题的方法。特别是，他们建议进行经济评估的研究人员应更积极地回应使用这些评估的决策者的需求。
