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Date: Thursday, July 25, 1996 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Damon Thompson (202)205-1842
The U.S. Public Health Service has issued a report containing recommendations on how to better compare the costs and benefits of health care treatment strategies.
The report, Cost Effectiveness in Health and Medicine, was prepared by the 13-member Panel on Cost Effectiveness in Health and Medicine. The panel is a non-federal group of physicians, economists, ethicists and scientists which was appointed in 1993 to bolster standards for economic evaluations of medical care and public health activities.
In its report, the panel focuses on cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs), a widely used method of measuring the economic and health consequences of health care strategies. The panel concludes that CEAs have been hampered by a lack of consistent standards. It recommends that all costs and effects of a health-care intervention be included in CEAs, and that such studies include quality of life information as well as survival rates.
"This report raises many fundamental issues that the medical care delivery system, the public health system and the public must come to terms with as we consider how to invest our health care dollars," said Assistant Secretary for Health Philip R.
Lee, M.D. "The panel's findings will be carefully reviewed within the department as well as by our private and public partners at state and local levels.
Agencies within the PHS and the Health Care Financing Administration will convene a workshop Nov. 25 at the National Institutes of Health to explore further steps based upon the panel's recommendations.
A summary of the report is available from the Office of Public Health and Science, U.S. Public Health Service. For more information, contact Dr. Marthe Gold, project director, at 202-205-8180.