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A cost comparison of laparoscopically assisted vaginal hysterectomy (LAVH) and total abdominal hysterectomy (TAH) in Australia is discussed as related to retrospective comparison of costs, operating time and length of hospital stay for 16 women undergoing LAVH and 16 age-matched women undergoing TAH, all for benign disease, 1994-95. It was found that the two procedures had the same cost.

Objective:To estimate the cost‐effectiveness of fiscal measures applied in remote community food stores for Aboriginal Australians. Methods:Six price discount strategies on fruit, vegetables, diet drinks and water were modelled. Baseline diet was measured as 12 months’ actual food sales data in three remote Aboriginal communities. Discount‐induced changes in food purchases were based on published price elasticity data while the weight of the daily diet was assumed constant. Dietary change was converted to change in sodium and energy intake, and body mass index (BMI) over a 12‐month period. Improved lifetime health outcomes, modelled for the remote population of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, were converted to disability adjusted life years (DALYs) saved using a proportional multistate lifetable model populated with diet‐related disease risks and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rates of disease. Results:While dietary change was small, five of the six price discount strategies were estimated as cost‐effective, below a $50,000/DALY threshold. Conclusion:Stakeholders are committed to finding ways to reduce important inequalities in health status between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and non‐Indigenous Australians. Price discounts offer potential to improve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health. Verification of these results by trial‐based research coupled with consideration of factors important to all stakeholders is needed.

While the public has growing expectations of health services, and the repertoire of health services to respond to these demands is expanding, governments are under pressure to justify their allocation of health resources. Expressed intentions to base decision-making on health outcomes will remain rhetoric, however, unless adequate tools to measure health outcomes are used. In response to this need for comparable information on health outcomes, the Public Health Division of the Department of Human Services in Victoria has undertaken a body of work to assist decision-making on health resource allocation in Victoria.