Evidence-Based and Cost-Effective Medicine for the Uninitiated

The use of home detoxification enables health care workers to avoid episodes of in-patient care, with its inherent high costs and secondary problems of label attachment and possible stigmatization. Patients, their carers (professional, voluntary and domestic), families and friends all involved in this 'at-home' process, thereby leading to empowerment and increased compliance. This book provides practical advice and guidance. If all the procedures here are followed, the care worker of whatever discipline is unlikely to encounter major difficulties. "Alcohol Home Detoxification and Assessment" provides the kind of model increasingly required for the move towards community care of people with a whole range of conditions, and will enable professionals to organize the process with confidence.

David B. Cooper

Part I: Introduction 1. The levers of decision-making in medical practice Part II: Evidence-based Medicine 2. Evidence-based medicine 3. The history of evidence-based medicine 4. The practicalities of evidence-based medicine 5. The effects of evidence-based medicine 6. Ethics, philosophy and evidence-based medicine 7. Concerns about evidence-based medicine Part III: Cost-effectiveness in Medicine 8. Cost-effectiveness in medical decision-making an introduction to cost-effectiveness based medical decision-making (CEM) 9. The process of cost-effectiveness analysis in medical decision-making 10. The effects of cost-effectiveness based medical decision-making 11. Concerns about CEM and its future development Concerns about CEM Part IV: Conclusion 12. So what matters, cost or benefit?