In 1997 SMARTRISK decided in order to raise the profile of unintentional injury, it needed to communicate in a language that was universally understood - the language of economics. As a result, the Ottawa based Hygeia Group was contracted and in 1998, in partnership with Health Canada, the Emergency Health Services Branch-Ministry of Health Ontario, the Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox & Addington Health Unit, the first economic burden study in Canada was produced entitled The Economic Burden of Unintentional Injury in Canada. The analysis for this study was accomplished using the Electronic Resource Allocation Tool (ERAT) developed by the Hygeia Group. The ERAT consists of a spreadsheet book with six sheets whose purpose is to allow the calculation of incidence costs of unintentional injury for 1995, in 1995 dollars. A user, however, may tailor the model to his or her needs by adding or modifying as much information as he or she wishes. Details of the case costing methodology will be discussed and the strengths and weaknesses of the ERAT model will be examined. Examples from The Economic Burden of Unintentional Injury in Canada will be used throughout. The tool, as it stands, must be considered a work in progress. There is always room for improvement. A number of analyses have been carried out with it to date. Provincial studies have been conducted for Ontario, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Alberta, while studies of the economic burden of unintentional injury in Manitoba and Atlantic Canada are underway. The model has even successfully been employed on a smaller scale in the region of Eastern Ontario. These applications have by no means exhausted the range of possibility. Only by use will refinements and extensions be made. Hopefully, this framework will be robust enough, and easy enough to modify, to support this type of use.
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