DHE Unit Cost Programme for Austria
Date: Ongoing since 2014
Information: Judit Simon, Susanne Mayer
A key feature of any economic evaluation is the cost analysis of included alternatives. For this it is necessary to measure and value resource use in a systematic way. The latter step is based on unit cost information, i.e. cost data of providing one unit of a good or service. From an analytical perspective, these costing processes have received relatively little attention to date. This is often considered a critical weakness, hindering the interpretation and comparison of studies, and also resulting in methodological criticism of economic evaluations in general. To overcome these issues, standardized unit costs collections exist in several countries but not in Austria. This project aims to promote the availability of unit cost information within the Austrian context.
A multi-stakeholder kick-off meeting took place at the DHE on August 13, 2014. The project since launched the publicly available DHE Unit Cost Online Database in 2016 and has been providing regular updates to it. This database reports collated unit cost information available from published economic evaluations and costing studies in Austria. Furthermore, the programme links efforts of relevant national (e.g. STREAMLINE) and international (e.g. PECUNIA) projects for the establishment of harmonized, methodologically robust and comparable multi-sectoral reference unit cost information in the form of a publicly available compendium for Austria.
Result(s):
- Mayer S, Łaszewska A, Simon J. Unit costs in economic evaluations: Quo vadis, Austria? Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Dec;20(1):117. DOI: 10.3390/ijerph20010117
- Mayer S, Kiss N, Łaszewska A, Simon J (2017): Costing evidence for health care decision-making in Austria: A systematic review. PLOS ONE, 12(8): e0183116. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0183116
- DHE Unit Cost Online Database