- Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (CEA): A method of comparing the relative costs and outcomes of different interventions.
- Demand: The quantity of healthcare services that people are willing and able to use at a given price.
- Supply: The quantity of healthcare services that providers are willing and able to deliver.
- Health Technology Assessment (HTA): The evaluation of health technologies based on clinical, economic, and social criteria.
- Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA)– An evaluation method where both costs and benefits of a healthcare intervention are measured in monetary terms.
- Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (CEA)– A method of comparing the costs of different interventions relative to their health outcomes, often expressed as cost per life-year gained.
- Cost-Utility Analysis (CUA)– A type of cost-effectiveness analysis that incorporates quality of life, often using Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) as the outcome.
- Equity– Fairness in healthcare, ensuring that vulnerable or disadvantaged groups are not left behind when resources are allocated.
- Externalities– Side effects (positive or negative) of a health intervention that affect people who are not directly involved (e.g., herd immunity from vaccination).
- Gross Domestic Product (GDP)– The total economic output of a country, often used to measure health spending as a percentage of national wealth.
- Health Economics– The study of how scarce resources are allocated in healthcare to maximise health outcomes and efficiency.
- Incremental Cost-Effectiveness Ratio (ICER)– A calculation that compares the extra cost of one intervention to the extra health benefits it provides compared to an alternative.
- Opportunity Cost– The value of the best alternative forgone when a choice is made, e.g., funding one program means another cannot be funded.
- Public Policy– Government actions, laws, and decisions aimed at addressing health system priorities and improving population health.
- Quality-Adjusted Life Year (QALY)– A measure that combines quantity and quality of life into a single unit, used to compare health outcomes across different interventions.
- Scarcity– The fundamental economic problem of having limited resources to meet unlimited healthcare needs.
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Introduction to Health Economics: What Every Health Professional Should Know Copyright © 2025 by Abdul Rahman b. Ramdzan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.