This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: Dr Jefferson and colleagues¹ report that many economic evaluations of health care have serious methodological flaws, and that these have not improved over time. This is particularly disappointing because many of the current methodological standards were established 2 decades ago. Thus, the article by Jefferson et al is unlikely to improve the acceptance of such studies. Many physicians view health economic studies with skepticism² and now may find further reason for their reservation.

The problem may even be worse than Jefferson et al indicate, however, because the checklists used in systematic reviews on health economic studies may not capture important methodological deficiencies. Checklists only reflect the quality of the data used to derive a cost-effectiveness ratio, but not the way the data are combined. Furthermore, they do not address more recent methodological advancements, which have not been widely adopted.³

Authors and peer reviewers must be better educated . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLES

Quality of Systematic Reviews of Economic Evaluations in Health Care
Tom Jefferson, Vittorio Demicheli, and Luke Vale
JAMA. 2002;287(21):2809-2812.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Impact of Formal Continuing Medical Education: Do Conferences, Workshops, Rounds, and Other Traditional Continuing Education Activities Change Physician Behavior or Health Care Outcomes?
Dave Davis, Mary Ann Thomson O'Brien, Nick Freemantle, Fredric M. Wolf, Paul Mazmanian, and Anne Taylor-Vaisey
JAMA. 1999;282(9):867-874.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT