Economic Modelling Methods for the Estimation of Resource Use, Cost-Effectiveness and Allocative Efficiency of Health Care Provision in a Capacity Constrained Health Care System

Abstract

Cost-effectiveness models for health care interventions generally make the assumption that all resources are available, as required, without capacity constraints. This assumption may be a reasonable approximation of the truth for a range of questions faced by decision makers in health care. However, in some health care settings, capacity constraints predominate leading to queue development. In these situations the use of a modelling technique that can accommodate these constraints would appear advisable to allow the efficiency of competing healthcare interventions to be determined. Nevertheless, there have been no empirical comparisons of economic modelling techniques that capture capacity constraints and those that do not. Further, there are only a few cost-effectiveness analyses (CEA) of health care that capture the effect of capacity constraints at all. This research seeks to explore these gaps in the literature in an applied manner.