Economic outcomes and contemporary pharmacy practice.

Health care reform will no doubt entail substantial reorganization of provider and payer systems to facilitate competition among groups or alliances of providers and payers. Pharmacists must be positioned to assume an active and significant role in the delivery of high-quality, affordable, and accessible care. To fill this role, pharmacists need to understand and use pharmacoeconomic evaluation--economic outcomes assessment for pharmaceutical products and services. To explore the value to society of pharmaceutical products and pharmacists, direct, indirect, and intangible costs must be studied. Pharmacoeconomic evaluation includes cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness, cost-minimization, and cost-utility analyses. As analytical tools, pharmacoeconomic studies can provide valuable information concerning the costs and consequences of pharmaceutical products and services. Pharmacists can play an important role in contributing to the economic efficiency of the health care system and in ensuring that economic, clinical, and humanistic dimensions are balanced in treatment decisions.