Dictionary
The Dictionary provides concise definitions of health economics terms, arranged alphabetically for quick reference. Use it to understand unfamiliar terminology or confirm the meaning of a specific term.
A
- Absenteeism
- Time lost from work due to illness, injury, or caregiving responsibilities, resulting in a direct, measurable cost to employers through lost productivity.
- AMR Economic Burden
- The total economic cost attributable to antimicrobial resistance, covering increased treatment costs, longer hospital stays, and lost productivity from resistant infections.
- Anxiety Disorder Cost
- The total economic burden of anxiety disorders, covering direct treatment costs, lost workplace productivity, and broader impacts on quality of life.
B
- Baumol Effect
- A phenomenon in which wages in labour-intensive, low-productivity-growth sectors rise alongside wages in high-productivity sectors, driving up the labour-intensive sector's relative cost.
C
- Cost Disease
- A phenomenon in which the cost of services in labour-intensive, low-productivity-growth sectors, such as healthcare, rises persistently relative to more automated sectors.
- Cost-of-Illness StudyCOI Study
- A cost-of-illness study is a descriptive economic analysis that identifies, measures and values the healthcare resource use, patient and caregiver costs, productivity losses and other economic consequences attributable to a disease, injury or risk factor in a defined population and period.
D
- Depression Burden
- The total impact of depression on individuals and society, covering treatment costs, lost productivity, and reduced quality of life.
E
- Employer Perspective
- An analytic viewpoint including only costs and outcomes relevant to an employer, such as premium contributions and productivity losses from absenteeism.
F
- Friction Cost Method
- A productivity loss valuation approach estimating only the cost of the finite period needed to restore normal production, generally lower than human capital estimates.
- Full Societal Perspective
- An analytic viewpoint including all costs and consequences regardless of who bears them, spanning healthcare, patient and carer time, and productivity losses.
H
- Healthcare Perspective
- An analytic viewpoint including only costs and outcomes falling on the healthcare payer or provider, excluding broader costs such as productivity loss.
- Human Capital ApproachHCA
- A method for valuing productivity lost to illness, disability, or premature death, based on the market wages the person would otherwise have earned.
I
- Indirect Cost
- A cost associated with an intervention that is not directly incurred in providing it, such as lost productivity from illness or premature death.
M
- Malmquist Index
- A productivity measure decomposing efficiency change over time into genuine technical progress versus change relative to an evolving best-practice frontier.
N
- Norovirus Economics
- The application of health economic evaluation to norovirus, a highly contagious virus causing acute gastroenteritis with substantial healthcare and productivity costs.
O
- Outbreak Cost
- The total economic burden of an infectious disease outbreak, covering direct healthcare costs, public health response spending, and productivity losses.
P
- Presenteeism
- Reduced productivity from an employee who is physically present at work but performing below their normal capacity due to illness or injury.
- Productive Life Years
- A measure of the years within a working lifespan an individual is expected to contribute to economic output, used to value lost productivity.
- Productivity
- A measure of output produced relative to inputs consumed, assessing how efficiently a provider converts resources into patient care.
- Productivity Cost
- The economic value of lost work output from illness or death, estimated using the human capital or friction cost approach.
- Productivity Management
- The strategies an organisation uses to monitor and optimise the output its resources generate, covering clinical and operational performance.
- Productivity Value
- A component of a technology's value reflecting its effect on a patient's ability to work and contribute economically, beyond clinical improvement.
S
- Societal Perspective
- An analytic viewpoint including all costs and outcomes regardless of who bears them, including productivity losses and informal carer time.
- Societal Value
- The total benefit a technology provides from the broadest perspective, covering direct patient health, caregiver burden, productivity, and other societal effects.
W
- Work Productivity
- The output an employee generates per unit of time worked, which health conditions can reduce through both absence and diminished performance.
- Work Productivity Outcome
- A measure capturing a health condition's effect on work-related productivity, covering both absenteeism, time missed entirely, and presenteeism, reduced performance while present.