Pharmacoeconomics as a tool to enhance efficency of health care services

Abstract

Today's cost-sensitive healthcare environment has created a competitive and challenging workplace for clinicians. Competition for diminishing resources has necessitated that the appraisal of healthcare goods and services extends beyond evaluations of safety and efficacy and considers the economic impact of these goods and services on the cost of healthcare. A challenge for healthcare professionals is to provide quality patient care while assuring an efficient use of resources. Defining the value of medicine is a common thread that unites today's healthcare practitioners. With serious concerns about rising medication costs and consistent pressure to decrease pharmacy expenditures and budgets, clinicians/prescribers, pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals must answer the question, “What is the value of the pharmaceutical goods and services I provide?” Pharmacoeconomics, or the discipline of placing a value on drug therapy, evolved to answer that question.