Assessing Costs, Benefits, and Cost-Effectiveness in TCM

The chapter intends to fill the gap in evidence on the potential benefits of introducing Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practices, with respect to its costs. In this regard, the different economic evaluations for the healthcare sector were described. Based on the results of the literature review, which showed a relative lack for standardized cost-benefit tools and methods examining the potential positive impact of TCM, a possible approach was structured, describing the suggested steps and necessary tools that would have to be adopted in order to run a complete appraisal of the costeffectiveness of TCM. The steps of the evaluation include gathering cost information; identifying benefits, computing such CBA outcome measures as net benefits and benefit-cost ratios; running cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) for additional confirmation of the results through the cost-effectiveness, reversed cost-effectiveness, and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios; and applying additional cost-utility analysis (CUA) tools in order to obtain the cost per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) and reversed cost per QALY outcome measures. The results could also be represented visually by using the incremental cost-effectiveness plane and cost-effectiveness acceptability curve.