Economic evaluations in occupational health: what brings the best bang for the buck?

[...]a qualitative assessment among decision-makers in the Ontario healthcare sector showed that financial information - mostly in the form of a business case - can be a key deciding factor of whether to go forward with implementation of an intervention or occupational health service (3). [...]economic evaluations in occupational health are highly heterogeneous in terms of their productivity-related cost estimation methods and large differences exist across studies in terms of the validity and transparent reporting of applied methods (9). [...]it is questionable whether the recommended friction cost approach is appropriate from the company perspective as well. Johanna M van Dongen, PhD,1' 2 Allard J van der Beek, PhD 3 1 Department of Health Sciences, Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam Movement Sciences Research Institute, The Netherlands. 2 Department of Health Sciences, Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, The Netherlands. 3 Department of Public and Occupational Health, Amsterdam UMC, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, The Netherlands.