cost-effectiveness
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cost-effectiveness
the extent to which an activity is thought to be as valuable as it is expensive. A public-assistance program that issued vouchers for nutritious foods in pregnancy might be considered cost-effective if it lowered the costly incidence of perinatal morbidity.
cost-ef·fec·tive·ness
(kawst-e-fekt'iv-nĕs)The proportion between expense and the goods and services received for them.
cost-effectiveness
An assessment or determination of the most efficient and least expensive approaches to providing health care and preventive medicine services. One component, health education, focuses on helping people to assume some responsibility for their own health maintenance and avoid preventable illness and disability. Accident prevention programs, immunization drives, and safe-sex campaigns are designed to reduce the number of patients who will suffer preventable illnesses. To control costs, health care providers and health care customers must also understand the comparative value of procedures and medicines. See: preventive medicine; preventive nursing
cost-effective, adjectivecost-effectiveness
pertaining to cost-effective.
cost-effectiveness analysis
a comparison of the relative cost-efficiencies of two or more ways of performing a task or achieving an objective.