Economic evaluation to inform health care decision-making: promise, pitfalls and a proposal for an alternative path.

Health economic evaluation aims at providing information on the efficiency of interventions. Since the 1980s, there have been major developments in the field, especially in terms of methodologies. As the field has expanded and developed, methodologies have become increasingly sophisticated.

The role (or not) of economic evaluation at the micro level: can Bourdieu's theory provide a way forward for clinical decision-making?

Despite increasing interest in health economic evaluation, investigations have shown limited use by micro (clinical) level decision-makers. A considerable amount of health decisions take place daily at the point of the clinical encounter; especially in primary care. Since every decision has an opportunity cost, ignoring economic information in family physicians' (FPs) decision-making may have a broad impact on health care efficiency.

The role of economic evaluation in the decision-making process of family physicians: design and methods of a qualitative embedded multiple-case study.

Background: A considerable amount of resource allocation decisions take place daily at the point of the clinical encounter; especially in primary care, where 80 percent of health problems are managed. Ignoring economic evaluation evidence in individual clinical decision-making may have a broad impact on the efficiency of health services. To date, almost all studies on the use of economic evaluation in decision-making used a quantitative approach, and few investigated decision-making at the clinical level.

Complexity and reflexivity: two important issues for economic evaluation in health care.

Economic evaluations are analytic techniques to assess the relative costs and consequences of health care programmes and technologies. Their role is to provide rigorous data to inform the health care decision-making process. Economic evaluation may oversimplify complex health care decisions.