Cost effectiveness in a hospital contact lens department

Given the shortage of resources in the NHS clinicians are increasingly being asked to search for more cost-effective treatment strategies. This requires consideration not only of the cost consequences to the NHS but also the impact on quality of care and patients' costs. This paper reports two studies of the cost effectiveness of alternative practices within a contact lens department. They show that, for the hospital concerned, both the internal production of, and more extensive stocking of, lenses are cost-effective strategies. Moreover it is argued that cost-effectiveness analysis might have wider applications within ophthalmology as a whole.