title: Register-based studies of healthcare costs.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The aim of this paper is to provide an overview and a few examples of how national registers are used in analyses of healthcare costs in Denmark.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The paper focuses on health economic analyses based on register data. For the sake of simplicity, the studies are divided into three main categories: economic evaluations of healthcare interventions, cost-of-illness analyses, and other analyses such as assessments of healthcare productivity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We examined a number of studies using register-based data on healthcare costs. Use of register-based data renders a comprehensive data material, often in the form of time series, which is very useful in health economic analyses. The disadvantage of register-based data is the use of tariffs, charges, or market prices as proxies for costs in the computation of healthcare costs.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Applied Health Services Research, Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark. mkru@cast.sdu.dk
authors.forename: Marie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kruse
authors.forename: Terkel
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Christiansen
mesh_terms: D017281:Cost of Illness; D003718:Denmark; D017048:Health Care Costs; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D012042:Registries / Q000592:standards