Controllable Cost
Controllable cost is a health service cost that a named budget holder can influence within the budget period, such as ward overtime or agency staffing.
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.
Concepts, entries and ontology terms
A concept page is a published entry on the wiki. Some concepts also have a full encyclopaedia article. The Health Economics Ontology (HEO) holds every concept, including dictionary terms without an article, so it is larger than the list of published pages. The knowledge graph shows how concepts relate to each other.
Convergence
Convergence is the point at which an MCMC run or other iterative simulation settles on a stable result as the number of iterations increases.
Convergent Validity
Convergent validity is evidence that a health measure correlates, as predicted in advance, with other measures of the same or a closely related construct.
Conversion Factor
Conversion factor (CF) is the money amount per relative value unit that turns fee schedule relative values, such as Medicare RVUs, into payment amounts.
Cook's Distance
Cook's distance is a regression diagnostic measuring how much all fitted values change when one observation, such as one patient's cost record, is removed.
Copas Model
The Copas model is a selection model for publication bias in meta-analysis that re-estimates the pooled effect under assumed rates of non-publication.
Copayment
A copayment (copay) is a fixed amount an insured person pays for a covered health service, such as USD 20 per visit, unlike percentage-based coinsurance.
COPD Assessment Test
COPD Assessment Test (CAT) is an eight-item patient questionnaire, scored 0 to 40, on how COPD affects health status, used in trials and GOLD assessment.
Core Outcome Set
Core outcome set (COS) is the agreed minimum set of outcomes all trials in a condition should measure and report, so results can be compared and combined.
Core Outcome Set Development
Core outcome set development is the consensus study, usually a review, Delphi and meeting, agreeing what trials in a condition should measure and report.
Correlation
Correlation is how strongly two variables move together or in opposite directions, such as costs and QALYs, without showing that one causes the other.
Correlation Coefficient
A correlation coefficient is a statistic from -1 to +1 giving the direction and strength of association between paired variables, such as costs and QALYs.
Correlation Matrix
A correlation matrix is a square table containing the pairwise correlation coefficients among a set of variables.
Cost
In health economics, cost is the value of resources used by a healthcare intervention, measured as the benefit forgone from their best alternative use.
Cost Accounting
Cost accounting is the recording of a health care provider's costs and their assignment to departments, activities and services to produce unit costs.
Cost Allocation
Cost allocation is the sharing of overhead and other indirect costs among health services or patients by a stated rule, such as bed-days or staff time.
Cost Analysis
Cost analysis is a partial economic evaluation that compares the costs of two or more healthcare alternatives without measuring their health outcomes.
Cost Containment
Cost containment is the use of policies such as budget caps, payment controls and patient charges to hold down the level or growth of health spending.
Cost Driver
A cost driver is a factor that causes a health service's costs to change over a period, such as patient visits, bed-days, staff time or case mix.
Cost Function
A cost function is the relationship between output, input prices and the lowest cost of production, used to study hospital scale, scope and efficiency.