Guidance Document for the Costing of Health Care Resources in the Canadian Setting: Second Edition

The Guidance Document for the Costing of Health Care Resources in the Canadian Setting: Second Edition is intended to guide researchers to publicly available cost information and to encourage transparency in the use of costs in economic evaluations for Canada. It replaces the Canada's Drug Agency A Guidance Document for the Costing Process (1996).

This document describes costs and costing methods for commonly used health resources and discusses when different costing approaches may be appropriate. It focuses on four key areas: identification, measurement, valuation, and reporting. It aims to provide consistent nomenclature, with a focus on national and publicly available data sources. It is not intended to be a comprehensive list of data sources or a cost accounting document. Researchers may find it helpful to use this document in conjunction with the Guidelines for the Economic Evaluation of Health Technologies: Canada.

Costing methods continue to evolve and information sources are subject to change. Canada's Drug Agency will revise this document as information and methodologies develop. It is current to the date of publication. Readers are encouraged to access the online appendix for up-to-date references.