Micro-Costing
A detailed bottom-up costing method that identifies and values every individual resource consumed, such as each minute of staff time.
Encyclopaedia
Explore comprehensive, evidence-informed explanations of key health economics concepts, including their development, application and relationships to other concepts. Published entries are validated through human expert review.
Minimal Important Difference
The smallest change in a health outcome measure a patient would perceive as beneficial, or that would prompt a clinician to change management.
Minimally Important Difference
The threshold change in a health outcome score considered meaningful, estimated using either anchor-based or distribution-based methods.
Modern Cost Analysis
A cost analysis incorporating current data sources, such as electronic health records and administrative claims, into estimating resource use.
Monopoly Pricing
The pricing behaviour of a firm with monopoly power, setting price above marginal cost to maximise profit and reduce quantity supplied.
Moral Hazard
Moral hazard occurs when protection from the consequences of an action changes a person’s behaviour because some resulting costs or risks are borne by another party.
Multi-Attribute Utility
A utility value derived by combining preference weights across several distinct attributes of an outcome into a single overall measure.
Multi-State Life Table
A life table method modelling a population's transitions among several health states, including recovery as well as decline, over successive age intervals.
Nash Equilibrium Health
A game theory solution in which no player can improve their outcome by unilaterally changing strategy, given the strategies chosen by others.
Negative Externality
A cost imposed on a third party by an economic activity, not reflected in its market price, leading to overproduction relative to the social optimum.
Net Benefit Approach
A framework for economic evaluation that converts health outcomes into money at a set value per unit of effect, then subtracts cost.
Net Budget Impact
The overall change in spending from adopting a new technology, after accounting for offsetting savings elsewhere, such as avoided hospital admissions.
Net Health Benefit
A summary measure expressing an intervention's value in health units, converting incremental cost into health forgone and subtracting it from health gained.
Net Margin
A financial ratio calculated as net income divided by total revenue, showing the proportion of revenue remaining as profit.
Net Monetary Benefit
A summary measure expressing an intervention's value in money, converting its incremental health effect into cash at a set threshold and subtracting incremental cost.
Net Present Value
The sum of a stream of future cash flows, each discounted to its present-day value, minus the initial cost of the investment.
Operating Cost
The recurring cost of an organisation's ongoing operations, such as staffing, supplies, and utilities, as distinct from one-off capital investment.
Operating Margin
A financial ratio calculated as operating income divided by revenue, showing the proportion remaining after operating expenses but before non-operating items.
Opportunity Cost
The value of the next best alternative forgone when a resource is allocated to a particular use.
Ordinal Scaling
A measurement scale property in which values can be ranked but numerical differences do not necessarily reflect equal differences in the underlying quantity.