Abstract
Healthcare cost measures are a vital tool to understand trends in how resources are allocated during healthcare delivery. This chapter will describe the importance of cost measurement, the ways that cost can be measured, and how cost measurement can be used to drive health system efficiency. The chapter will review unique elements of designing a cost measure. These elements are discussed in the context of the measure specifications and four overarching measure evaluation criteria, including importance to measure and report, scientific acceptability of the measure properties, usability, and feasibility.