Cost-Utility Analysis
Cost-utility analysis (CUA) is a form of economic evaluation that compares the costs of alternative interventions with their outcomes expressed in a common, preference-based measure of health — most often the quality-adjusted life year (QALY), or in global health the disability-adjusted life year (DALY). By combining length and quality of life into a single index, CUA allows interventions with very different effects to be compared on a like-for-like basis, and it produces an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio expressed as cost per QALY gained. It is the dominant method for informing decisions about which health technologies and programs to fund.
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Sources
- Drummond, M. F., Sculpher, M. J., Claxton, K., Stoddart, G. L., & Torrance, G. W. (2015). Methods for the Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programmes (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780199665877
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Cost-Utility Analysis (CUA) for Health and Policy Decisions. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/public-policy/cost-utility-analysis
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