In healthcare evaluation cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is a comparison of interventions and their consequences in which both costs and resulting benefits (health outcomes and others) are expressed in monetary terms. This enables two or more treatment alternatives to be compared using the summary metric of net monetary benefit, which is the difference between the benefit of each treatments (expressed in monetary units) less the cost of each. Monetary valuations of benefits are commonly obtained through willingness to pay (WTP) surveys or discrete choice experiments (DCEs). Although popular in other fields, CBA is not commonly used in health technology assessment due to difficulty of associating monetary values with health outcomes such as (increased) survival. Most commonly CBAs have been used to assess large capital development projects (new hospital facilities) or interventions that improve waiting times or location/access to services.
How to cite: Cost-Benefit Analysis [online]. (2016). York; York Health Economics Consortium; 2016. https://yhec.co.uk/glossary/cost-benefit-analysis/