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REPLY

Cost–Utility Analysis

right arrow Peter J. Neumann, ScD; Richard H. Chapman, SM; and Patricia W. Stone, PhD, MPH, RN

3 April 2001 | Volume 134 Issue 7 | Page 626


IN RESPONSE:

We appreciate Brown and colleagues' remarks about the importance of recognizing the diversity of practices used in published cost–utility analyses. We agree that research has supported the reliability and usefulness of the time-tradeoff method. It was not our intention to criticize the time-tradeoff approach or to equate it with the rating scale, which has not demonstrated such reliability (1). The sentence to which the authors refer, and which appears in the glossary accompanying our paper, simply points out that the time-tradeoff approach does not incorporate uncertainty and thus does not technically produce a "utility."

The purpose of our paper was to document the reporting practices used in cost–utility analyses. Nowhere do we discuss the relative usefulness of various preference-elicitation techniques. The glossary was designed to help readers unfamiliar with the paper's terminology. We did not mean to imply that the time-tradeoff method is invalid or unreliable; to the extent that the sentence in question created any confusion about the matter, we appreciate the authors' noting it.


Author and Article Information
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Harvard School of Public Health; Boston, MA 02115 (Neumann, Chapman)
University of Rochester; Rochester, NY 14642 (Stone)


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1. Torrance GW. Measurement of health state utilities for economic appraisal J Health Econ. 1986;5:1-30. [PMID: 0010311607].

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Related articles in Annals:

Academia and Clinic
The Quality of Reporting in Published Cost-Utility Analyses, 1976–1997
Peter J. Neumann, Patricia W. Stone, Richard H. Chapman, Eileen A. Sandberg, AND Chaim M. Bell
Annals 2000 132: 964-972. [ABSTRACT][Full Text]  

Letters
Cost–Utility Analysis
Gary C. Brown, Melissa M. Brown, AND Sanjay Sharma
Annals 2001 134: 625-626. [Full Text]  




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