Background, aims and objectives

Information on the medical costs of injury and their international variation is a necessary step in the economic assessment of injury prevention measures in Europe. Medical costs of injury are an important indicator for priority setting in injury prevention. It is a composite indicator, including information on incidence and severity of injuries. Therefore, the European Commission subsidised the first phase of the IPP-project ‘A surveillance based model to calculate the direct medical costs in Europe: Eurocost’.

So far, national studies on the medical costs of injury have been performed for several European countries.2-7 However, due to the use of a variety of methodologies, the results are difficult to compare. In particular, comparison of specific injury categories is hardly possible. An incidence-based injury-costing model has been developed in the Netherlands in joint collaboration with the ECOSA European Working Group on the costs of injury.8-13 With help of this model continuous monitoring of medical costs of injury is possible in the Netherlands.8 Application of this methodology to other European countries enhances the effective use of EHLASS and facilitates a better international comparability of national cost of injury estimates, compared to studies that have been performed so far.

The report describes the methods applied and results obtained in first phase I of Eurocost. This is a collaborative effort of participants from Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands (co-ordinator), Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The aim of the overall project is to enhance the effective use of current European (EHLASS) and national injury surveillance systems for policy decision making, by adding monitoring information on the medical costs of injury. Its specific objectives are:
- to collect, harmonise and analyse data on injury incidence and related health care consumption and costs (phase I; this report);
- to estimate the medical costs of injury, and of home and leisure accidents (HLA) in particular, in each participating country using a uniform methodology and to explore international variation in medical costs and its underlying demographical, epidemiological and health care factors (phase II; future activities).

The project activities were performed in joined collaboration with experts from the participating European countries. All experts have experience in the use of routinely available data sources for injury monitoring and surveillance and/or medical costs of injury studies. All participants have direct or indirect access to these data sources.

For the full summary including Methodology, Activities and results phase I, Concluding remarks and References plesae open the PDF file.

For the full report on this project please e-mail eurosafetynet@consafe.nl