Resource use

Resource use refers to the use of healthcare staff time, facilities, or consumables (especially medicines). In clinical trials and other studies, healthcare costs are frequently estimated by counting items of resource that are used by study subjects, and associating these with relevant costs for each resource unit for the country of interest. In fee-for-service systems, such as in the US, charges may be recorded, which can be converted to costs using cost-to-charge ratios. Commonly recorded items of resource use are GP or specialist visits, hospital admissions (often classified by diagnostic-related group) or hospital bed days (often classified by intensity of ward care), and medications administered (by dosage, frequency, route of administration). These may be recorded as one-off events or aggregated over a time period (month or year) for use in economic modelling.
Resource use and unit cost data are available from many sources, and judgements may be needed as to which data are most suitable for use in the particular context. This is usually based on an assessment of data quality and the similarity of the source (study) to the situation to which the resource use and unit costs will be applied. Resource use data collected in clinical trials may be of limited value for economic evaluations because of the inclusion of protocol-related elements (study visits, care in specialist centres), which may not be representative of routine care. Also, trials are frequently performed in a variety of countries where care patterns and resource definitions may differ.