School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Herston Road, Herston, Queensland 4006, Australia.
BMC Complement Altern Med. 2010 Nov 11;10:66. doi: 10.1186/1472-6882-10-66.
For CAM to feature prominently in health care decision-making there is a need to expand the evidence-base and to further incorporate economic evaluation into research priorities.In a world of scarce health care resources and an emphasis on efficiency and clinical efficacy, CAM, as indeed do all other treatments, requires rigorous evaluation to be considered in budget decision-making.
Economic evaluation provides the tools to measure the costs and health consequences of CAM interventions and thereby inform decision making. This article offers CAM researchers an introductory framework for understanding, undertaking and disseminating economic evaluation. The types of economic evaluation available for the study of CAM are discussed, and decision modelling is introduced as a method for economic evaluation with much potential for use in CAM. Two types of decision models are introduced, decision trees and Markov models, along with a worked example of how each method is used to examine costs and health consequences. This is followed by a discussion of how this information is used by decision makers.
Undoubtedly, economic evaluation methods form an important part of health care decision making. Without formal training it can seem a daunting task to consider economic evaluation, however, multidisciplinary teams provide an opportunity for health economists, CAM practitioners and other interested researchers, to work together to further develop the economic evaluation of CAM.
为了使 CAM 在医疗保健决策中占据重要地位，需要扩大证据基础，并进一步将经济评估纳入研究重点。在医疗保健资源稀缺且强调效率和临床疗效的世界中，CAM（就像所有其他治疗方法一样）需要进行严格的评估，才能在预算决策中被考虑。
经济评估提供了衡量 CAM 干预措施的成本和健康后果的工具，从而为决策提供信息。本文为 CAM 研究人员提供了一个理解、进行和传播经济评估的入门框架。讨论了可用于 CAM 研究的各种经济评估类型，并介绍了决策模型作为经济评估的一种方法，该方法在 CAM 中具有很大的应用潜力。引入了两种类型的决策模型，决策树和马尔可夫模型，并通过一个示例来说明如何使用每种方法来检查成本和健康后果。接下来讨论了决策者如何使用这些信息。
毫无疑问，经济评估方法是医疗保健决策的重要组成部分。如果没有正式的培训，考虑经济评估可能会让人望而生畏，但是多学科团队为卫生经济学家、CAM 从业者和其他有兴趣的研究人员提供了一个机会，可以共同努力，进一步发展 CAM 的经济评估。
