Hence, when studying how alternative GP payment contracts affect productivity, it is crucial to account for the productivity of the wider health services, i.e. to include the resource use generated by GPs referrals.
The costs of the 'no event' state and the other health states include the resource use for the management of the initial ACS: as such, the cost in all these states may be higher than typical costs for a patient with stable cardiovascular disease or an MI patient who did not have ACS in the preceding 12-month period.
The social cost of an activity includes the value of all the resources used in its provision.
The survey instrument (available from ) guided collection of data on all the resources used, including capital (one-time investment) and recurrent (on-going) items.
The total cost figures represent economic rather than financial costs i.e. they reflect the value of the resources used and include resources drawn on by the project but funded from other sources (statutory worker time).
Most included studies reported only part of the resources used, and methods for collecting cost data were unclear.
For example the resources used sometimes included discussion with naturopathic colleagues (49%), journal articles describing a case study (43%), journal articles describing randomised clinical trials (41%), information from course notes (43%), popular health magazines (44%) and reference web sites (37%).
Costs at participant level include all resources used at the point of delivery of the intervention (provider of the intervention) such as: costs of screening, testing with the oral glucose tolerance test and other biochemical examinations, educating, exercising etc. Changes in use of health services due to intervention are also considered.
The total costs include the cost of resources used associated with the app (and website) such as server hosting and moderator, as well as cost of health services used.
The economic costs of the sexuality education programs were estimated, including all resources used, and the budgetary outlays were also calculated, i.e. the costs of running the programs additional to already existing expenses for teacher salaries.
