the objectives of this study are to present an overview of economic evaluation and to expand upon a previous review to examine the current scope and quality of cam economic evaluations. as such, a thorough and external review of economic and health outcomes of cam is necessary for evidence-based consideration of cam therapies as a covered expense. we end the paper with a description of the attributes of cam that make economic evaluation challenging and how these issues may be addressed. the most basic form of economic evaluation is a table that lists the individual economic and health outcomes of alternative interventions. a study that describes the economic and health outcomes of a single therapy can also be called a cost-identification study. our systematic review of the cam economic evaluation literature (presented below) revealed no cost-consequence studies and no cost-benefit analyses. the national center for complementary and alternative medicine (nccam) defines cam as “a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not presently considered to be part of conventional medicine [28].” as the purpose of economic evaluations is to inform clinical practice and health policy decisions, the best evaluations are timely and use the best data available at the time [10].
if the health outcomes for one therapy are better than that of its alternative and the economic outcomes are better or equal (lower or equal costs), that therapy is said to dominate (be clearly better than) its alternative. all studies stated the time horizon for costs and benefits and most (35 or 90%) reported a time horizon of one year or less. a possible explanation for the paucity of studies is that there may be less of an incentive to perform economic evaluations of cam. for example, in our review we interpreted item 1 as whether the study stated either a specific research question or study objectives in terms of economic and health outcomes. as these types of guidelines are not yet available for all cam therapies, we did not assess whether cam therapies were applied appropriately in the studies reviewed. in many ways the economic evaluation of cam therapies is similar to that of conventional medicine. despite the challenges described for economic evaluations of cam therapies, these studies ought to be done. whereas the number and quality of these studies has increased in recent years and more cam therapies have been shown to be good value, there are still not enough studies to measure the cost effectiveness of the majority of cam. ph also read and evaluated the quality of all papers included in the review.
the .gov means it’s official. the site is secure. objective: the aim of this literature review, performed within the framework of the swiss governmental program of evaluation of complementary medicine (pek), was to investigate costs of complementary and alternative medicine (cam). materials and methods: a systematic literature search was conducted in 11 electronic databases. results: 38 publications were found: 23 on cam of various definitions (medical and non-medical practitioners, over-the-counter products), 13 on homeopathy, 2 on phytotherapy.
most studies report ‘out of pocket’ costs, because cam is usually not covered by health insurance. one study revealed a reduction of 1.5 days of absenteeism from work in the cam group compared to conventionally treated patients. costs for cam covered by insurance companies amounted to approximately 0.2-0.5% of the total healthcare budget (switzerland, 2003). as compared to conventional patients, cam patients tend to cause lower costs. conclusion: results suggest lower costs for cam than for conventional patients, but the limited methodological quality lowers the significance of the available data.
in the united states consumers spend over $34 billion per year on cam therapies [2], dollars spent outside the conventional health care financing system. such costs per cam-treatment / patient / month were aud 7-66, cad 250 and gbp 13.62 +/- 1.61. costs per treatment were eur 205 (range: 15-1,278), usd 414 +/- 269 and americans spend $30.2 billion a year on alternative and complementary medicines and procedures, including $1.9 billion on children 4 to 17, disadvantages of alternative medicine, disadvantages of alternative medicine, why alternative medicine is better, scientifically proven alternative medicine, alternative medicine studies.
several methods are available for evaluating the economic impact of naturopathic and cam therapies: a cost-benefit analysis (cba) compares the the argument in favor of cam that its costs are lower than those of conventional medicines was questioned for oncology. in fact, complementary on average, 5% of the overall out-of-pockets costs, 9% of health costs, and 5% of total annual household income in lower-middle-income countries, complementary and alternative medicine, alternative system of medicine, does complementary and alternative medicine work, what are the 5 major types of complementary and alternative medicine, traditional medicine vs alternative medicine, the economic evaluation of complementary and alternative medicine, where did complementary therapies originate, u.s. spending on complementary and alternative medicine, in which of these countries would you expect to have to pay out of pocket for cam treatment? quizlet, alternative medicine essay.
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