[Theoretical implications of health economic evaluations in an Austrian context].

It is a well acknowledged fact that steep increases in health expenditures are mainly due to improvements in health technologies as well as the ageing of population combined with mounting societal preferences towards health. This "natural" tendency increasingly faces constraints of public budgets. Therefore, both efficiency and effectiveness considerations have to be put in place in order to allocate financial resources in such a way as to foster optimal results. This can best be done by implementing the analytical tool of health economic evaluations. However, in the Austrian context health economic evaluations only play a minor role as yet. The major hindrance for this unsatisfactory situation is the complex system of health finance which impedes overall considerations beyond the array of particular budgets.