Introducing Economic Evaluation as a Decision Support Tool in Health Care: A Case Review of IR Iran

Background: Health care is a dominant economic and political issue in many economically developing and even developed nations. Most of these nations have experienced rapid increases in their healthcare spending over recent years. Objectives: This challenge creates a continuing quest for reaching better health system efficiency, equity as well as quality and safety. Materials and Methods: Economic analytic methods have been created to inform decisionmakers where the appropriate allocation of scarce resources is significantly more needed. However, through a non-systematic (narrative) review it was found that Iranian decision- or policy-makers may not be well informed and equipped to make complex policy decisions about funding and delivery of health care in order to meet financing needs. Results: It is likely that, to date, little attention has been paid to developing a better conceptual understanding of economic evaluations in decision-making environments at the local level or across the whole healthcare system. Conclusions: This study aims to shed light on different methods of economic evaluations in order to provoke healthcare professionals and researchers to think about different ways in which economic evaluations might be of value to their practices.