About This Site

Introduction to the Online Cost Analysis Project at Columbia University

Welcome to the online “Cost Analysis Project” at the Mailman School of Public Health. This online project is intended to complement the course in Cost Benefit Analysis in Health (P8541). Through the online exercises, the student will derive a sense of the actual efforts involved in making cost effectiveness calculations, or particular components of the larger analysis.

The health care system in the United States is a complex confluence of individuals, insurance organizations, providers, and other interested parties. These groups, and their interactions, in particular, help raise significant concerns about the quality of health care and the cost of services rendered. Cost analysis in health care (cost effectiveness and cost benefit, in particular) is one tool that has been employed over the past several years in an effort to address these issues. It is still an imperfect science, but it is being adapted with slow and deliberate changes to reflect the needs of policy makers in making decisions along several important dimensions.

How much money should be spent on a particular intervention?
Who will the intervention serve?
Is the intervention better than others treating that particular illness?
Is it a worthwhile intervention given competing illnesses and preventive measures?

For every opportunity to spend sparse health care resources there is a missed opportunity elsewhere. Cost benefit analysis is an important tool in helping allocate resources into its most productive uses for society. These exercises have been devised with those ideas in mind. Data and other information is provided to the student to examine issues such as the charges for an inpatient hospital stay for a particular illness, or the effectiveness of one drug in treating an illness vs. the effectiveness of another drug. The exercises are independent of one another, unless the student is instructed otherwise. They build on each other only in the sense that understanding a latter exercise frequently requires understanding of previous ones. Cost effectiveness analysis builds on itself; it moves from simple cost analysis to more rigorous and complex cost effectiveness calculations. These exercises follow that pattern.

The illnesses, on the whole, are fictitious, but the approaches used to complete the exercises are grounded in standard cost effectiveness (benefit) methodology. The exercises are intended to be completed along with a course in the subject matter and under the close supervision of the instructor.

To learn how to use the exercises properly please review the Help page.

Acknowledgments

Version 1.0 of The Cost Benefit Analysis Learning Modules was created in the Spring of 2002 in collaboration with Josh Graff Zivin (Assistant Professor, Division of Health Policy and Management at the Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health) and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL). Kristen Sosulski was the project manager for CCNMTL.

Faculty Producers

Sherry Glied
Josh Graff Zivin

Executive Producers

Frank Moretti
Maurice Matiz

Producer

Bernie Kluger

Project Manager

Kristen Sosulski

Graduate Assistant

Isadora Gil

Technology Development & Production

Anders Pearson

Interface Design

Marc Raymond

Quality Assurance

Ju-Ling Shih

Release History

Version 1.0 - TBA