Confidence intervals for cost/effectiveness ratios

Abstract

The reduction of costs is becoming increasingly important in the medical field. The relevant topic of many clinical trials is not effectiveness per se, but rather cost-effectiveness ratios. Surprisingly, no statistical tools for analyzing cost-effectiveness ratios have been provided in the medical literature yet. This paper explains the gap in the literature, and provides a first technique for obtaining confidence intervals for cost-effectiveness ratios. The technique does not use sophisticated tools to achieve maximal optimality, but seeks for tractability and ease of application while still satisfying all formal statistical requirements.