VALUATION OF MEDICAL RESOURCE UNITS COLLECTED IN HEALTH ECONOMIC-STUDIES

This paper reviews the issues that are critical for the valuation of m edical resources in the context of health economic studies. There are several points to consider when undertaking the valuation of medical r esources. The perspective of the analysis should be established before determining the valuation process. Future costs should be discounted to present values, and time and effort spent in assigning a monetary v alue to a medical resource should be proportional to its importance in the analysis. Prices vary considerably based on location of the servi ce and the severity of the illness episode. Because of the wide variab ility in pricing data, sensitivity analysis is an important component of validation of study results. A variety of data sources have been ap plied to the valuation of medical resources. Several types of data are reviewed in this paper, including claims data, national survey data, administrative data, and marketing research data. Valuation of medical resources collected in clinical trials is complex because of the lack of standardization of the data sources. A national pricing data sourc e for health economic valuation would greatly facilitate study analysi s and make comparisons between results more meaningful.