Productivity Costs in Economic Evaluations Past, Present, and Future    

 

This article is to show the past and present developments in the theory and practice of economic evaluations. During this report, there were questions on whether and how to include productivity costs, especially related to paid work. Several approaches have been proposed. Productivity costs are ignored in economic evaluations that had strong impact on cost-effectiveness outcomes. In the study, it shows that economic evaluations are increasingly used to aid decision makers in allocating scarce health care resources. Listed in the report are important issues relating to the estimation of productivity costs within economic evaluations.

    Productivitiy costs are considered the costs associated with paid and unpaid production loss and replacement due to illness, disability or the death of productive persons. There are two prominent perspectives, (1) health care perspective and the societal perspective. With adoptive societal perspective, productivity costs are clearly relevant and should be included in the evaluation. There are also ethical concerns raised regarding equity implications which includes productivity costs in economic evaluations. In the study productivity when reduced at work is also called presentism. In some cases, presentism maybe important (cost-wise) than absenteeism. The productivity costs involved related paid and unpaid labor is often ignored. Productivity losses may negatively affect a workers’ productivity in case of team-dependent production. Given the current applied productivity cost, the methods used to estimate productivity costs helps to explore the theoretical and practical potential to transfer societal savings due to productivity increases into the healthcare sector.

 Work Cited:Brouwer WB, Koysmanschap MA, Ritter FF, Productivity costs in cost-effectiveness analysis: numerator or denominator- a futher discussion. Heath. Econ. 1997; 6 (5); 511-4.