Inclusion or exclusion of productivity losses/gains in cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) of health technologies such as pharmaceutical agents may significantly impact formulary decisions due to their potential to increase or decrease incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) of treatment interventions being compared.

No systematic review of studies that examined the impact of productivity losses/gains on estimates of cost-effectiveness of drug interventions was available. This study was undertaken to address that information gap, restricting itself to a review of studies of pharmaceutical agents without consideration of medical devices or vaccines.

Further examination and discussion is needed to consider the optimal framework for considering productivity losses/gains in cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analyses.