Reporting health economic evaluations: CHEERS and beyond

Health economic evaluations are relevant to those making healthcare resource allocation decisions, such as listing a new drug on the national formulary or launching a new vaccination programme. Compared with clinical studies that report only the health consequences of an intervention, economic evaluations require more space to report additional items such as resource use, costs, preference-related information, and cost effectiveness results. This creates challenges for editors, peer reviewers, and those who wish to scrutinise a study’s findings. The Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS) updated previous efforts to produce a single useful reporting standard. It received endorsement from, and was co-published in, 10 journals that frequently publish health economic evaluations. CHEERS provides a sound basis for improving the reporting of economic evaluations.