Cost-effectiveness analysis can illustrate society's best opportunities for optimizing health benefits in the face of limited resources. But while recent years have witnessed a dramatic increase in the performance and publication of cost-effectiveness analyses, the methods used have varied widely, raising questions about the usefulness of the information to policy makers. The primary objectives of the research are to investigate variations in methods used to estimate the cost-effectiveness of a broad range of interventions, and to compare the cost-effectiveness of the interventions, after standardizing the ratios. The research calls for: 1) the development of a comprehensive database of lifesaving interventions that have used costs per quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) to measure health benefits; 2) comparisons of the methods used to estimate cost-effectiveness across studies; 3) comparisons of unadjusted and adjusted, standardized ratios; 4) the construction of a league table of cost/QALY ratios that adhere to the recommendations of the U.S. Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine; and 5) analyses investigating the impact of using different methods in estimating costs and quality-adjusted survival. The findings should help public and private policy makers better understand the relative benefits of diverse interventions and aid in resource allocation decisions. It should also help move the field toward consistency in estimation techniques. Given the well-documented lack of standards in the field, and the need for a common metric for purposes of comparison, the research should prove important to future policy makers in a wide range of disciplines.
