A comparison of methods to handle skew distributed cost variables in the analysis of the resource consumption in schizophrenia treatment.

Background: Transformation of the dependent cost variable is often used to solve the problems of heteroscedasticity and skewness in linear ordinary least square regression of health service cost data. However, transformation may cause difficulties in the interpretation of regression coefficients and the retransformation of predicted values.

Aims Of The Study: The study compares the advantages and disadvantages of different methods to estimate regression based cost functions using data on the annual costs of schizophrenia treatment.