Preferences for hospital quality in Zambia: results from a discrete choice experiment.

This study reports on the results of a discrete choice experiment undertaken in Zambia to assess the factors influencing the demand for hospital care in Zambia, in particular the role of (perceived) quality and trade-offs between price and quality. Valuations of quality were evaluated for the treatment of two acute medical conditions, cerebral malaria in adults and acute pneumonia in children. Marginal utilities and willingness-to-pay for attributes of quality of hospital care were estimated, together with the influence of socioeconomic characteristics on these valuations and the extent of non-linearities in valuations of time and money.

Searching literature databases for health care economic evaluations: how systematic can we afford to be?

Background: As the health care economic-evaluation literature continues to grow, a need for sound methods to conduct systematic reviews of the existing evidence is emerging. So far, reviews of economic evaluations have relied upon noncomprehensive sources and have adopted simplistic search methods, both likely to lead to biased results.

Objective: To provide evidence of the performance of alternative approaches for identifying published health care economic evaluations and to illustrate what forms of bias may affect systematic reviews of such studies.