Health Care Costing: Data, Methods, Future Directions

Health Services and Economics Branch staff have collaborated with colleagues at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and Emory University to develop a supplement to the journal Medical Care. The supplement, published in July 2009, examines a broad array of methodologic issues related to health care cost estimation. The supplement's papers are led by experts in health economics, epidemiology, health services research, and biostatistics. They:

• examine current applications and standard practices in health care cost estimation;
• discuss methodological and empirical challenges to furthering this area of research;
• identify "best practices" in the measurement, statistical analysis, and application of health care costs; and
• inform the research agenda on improving data resources, methods, and the scientific quality and relevance of cost analyses.

This supplement is especially timely because accurate measurement of health care costs is critical for developing health care budgets, setting priorities for allocating funds, and making health care policy decisions. Estimates of the costs associated with preventing, detecting, or treating disease are key inputs to cost-effectiveness analyses and other economic evaluations.

The supplement is based on a workshop held on December 6-7, 2007 and co-sponsored by NCI, AHRQ, and the VA. The workshop agenda and presentations are available upon request.

Requests for one free print copy of the supplement may be made to the AHRQ Publications Clearinghouse. Please order by specifying AHRQ publication number OM 09-0079: Medical Care supplement on health care costing. Please use one of the methods listed below to place your order. If more than one copy is needed, please describe the reason in your request.

• In the United States, call the toll-free number 800-358-9295, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• Hearing impaired persons may call 888-586-6340 for the TDD service.
• Callers from outside of the United States only should use the telephone number (703) 437-2078.
• Written requests may be sent to: AHRQ Publications Clearinghouse, P.O. Box 8547, Silver Spring, MD 20907-8547.
• Requests via e-mail may be sent to: AHRQPubs@ahrq.hhs.gov.

Complete citation:

Yabroff KR, Brown ML, Lawrence WF, Barnett PG, Lipscomb J, eds. Health Care Costing: Data, Methods, Future Directions. Medical Care 2009 July;47(7 suppl 1):S1-S142.