New IHE report on drug administration costs
This IHE report questions the accuracy and reliability of using standardized drug administration tariffs from publicly available price lists, such as the Southern Healthcare Region’s Price List (SSPL) in Sweden, in health economic evaluations. These tariffs include unrelated costs (such as the drugs themselves, accounting for up to 76% of the total cost), lack granularity, and may overstate hospital drug administration costs by more than 20 times compared to the economic value of clinical resource use.
Clinical input from healthcare personnel confirms that resource use varies significantly with administration complexity and treatment occasion — factors that SSPL tariffs fail to reflect.
To address these gaps, the report applies a marginal cost approach as an alternative method for estimating drug administration costs, aimed at improving transparency, granularity, and alignment with the requirements of accurate health economic evaluations.
