Overview of the Arthritis Cost Consequence Evaluation System (ACCES): a pharmacoeconomic model for celecoxib

Pharmacoeconomic analyses have become useful and essential tools for health care decision makers who increasingly require such analyses prior to placi ng a drug on a national, regional or hospital formulary. Previous health ec onomic models of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have been r estricted to evaluating a narrow range of agents within specific health car e delivery systems using medical information derived from homogeneous clini cal trial data. This paper summarizes the Arthritis Cost Consequence Evalua tion System (ACCES)-a pharmacoeconomic model that has been developed to pre dict and evaluate the costs and consequences associated with the use of cel ecoxib in patients with arthritis, compared with other NSAIDs and NSAIDs pl us gastroprotective agents. The advantage of this model is that it can be c ustomized to reflect local practice patterns, resource utilization and cost s, as well as provide context-specific health economic information to a var iety of providers and/or decision makers.