This chapter summarizes the importance of budget-impact analysis as a tool to assess the impact on population health and payer budgets of new health care interventions. We discuss the complementary nature of budget-impact analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis and provide a reminder about differences in purpose, structure, assumptions, and inputs between these two types of analysis. We also provide a brief overview of this book’s recommendations for budget-impact analysis, both in terms of essential components and calculations as well as strategies to design analyses that are credible and useful to budget holders. Example budget-impact analyses are presented to demonstrate how components have been added to these analyses to make them more credible and useful for the budget holder. Finally, areas are suggested where future development in budget-impact analysis methods is needed.
