Perspective in
pharmacoeconomics
Pharmacoeconomics refers to the scientific discipline that compares the value of one pharmaceutical drug or drug therapy to another. It is a sub-discipline of health economics. A pharmacoeconomic study evaluates the cost (expressed in monetary te ...
refers to the economic vantage point of a pharmacoeconomic analysis, such as a
cost-effectiveness analysis
Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is a form of economic analysis that compares the relative costs and outcomes (effects) of different courses of action. Cost-effectiveness analysis is distinct from cost–benefit analysis, which assigns a monetar ...
or
cost-utility analysis. This affects the types of costs (resource expenditures) and benefits that are relevant to the analysis.
Five general perspectives are often cited in pharmacoeconomics, including institutional, third party,
patient
A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by healthcare professionals. The patient is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician, nurse, optometrist, dentist, veterinarian, or other health c ...
,
government
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...
al and
societal
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societ ...
. The author must state the perspective and then ensure that costs and valuations remain consistent with it throughout the study, explaining briefly the applicable nomenclature. This should allow prospective reader to get a better understanding, and a firmer grasp of the subject matter.
If, for example, a pharmacoeconomic study takes the institutional perspective, medication cost would be relevant to resource expenditures involved in therapy delivery. Since the institution (e.g.
hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emerge ...
) incurs this expense, it would be included. Other relevant costs include inventory carrying cost, pharmacy time to compound or dispense, nursing time to administer, disposables (e.g. medication cups or intravenous tubing) and allocated hospital overhead costs
Valuation defines the currency reference that represents the resource expenditure associated with a given cost. The actual "dollar amount" to be attributed to the medication needs to be consistent with the perspective as well. Average wholesaler price (AWP) might not be considered an appropriate valuation of medication cost from an institutional perspective, if it does not represent the cost to the institution. Average acquisition cost would be more relevant.
More complex perspectives may require broader consideration of costs and more sophisticated valuations. For example, in the "societal" perspective, it is necessary for the author to consider costs that would not be relevant to a given institutional perspective. Examples include lost productivity and lost wages due to illness.
Pharmaceutical industry
Health economics