Health Economics in Dentistry

Health economics is an independent branch of economics that is concerned both empirically and theoretically with the economic aspects of healthcare and more particularly with the production and distribution of scarce health goods. The justification for a specifically economic consideration of the non-economic good represented by health is that many healthcare problems (a) are connected with economic phenomena and conditions, (b) can be described and quantified in economic categories, and (c) either can be solved by economic means or, in view of the scarcity of the resources required, call for a strategy based on economic considerations. In addition, of course, other, non-economic, approaches (e. g. evidence-based medicine/evidence-based dentistry, social medicine or social law) can be applied, the results of which can contribute on an interdisciplinary basis to analyses in the field of health economics.