Estimating the value of an internal biostatistical consulting service

Biostatistical consulting is a service business. Although a consulting biostatistician's goal is long-term collaborative relationships with investigators, this is the same as the long-term goal of any business: having a group of contented, satisfied customers. In this era of constrained resources, we must be able to demonstrate that the benefit a biostatistical consulting group provides to its organization exceeds its actual cost to the institution. In this paper, I provide both a theoretical framework for assessing the value of a biostatistical service and provide an ad hoc method to value the contribution of a biostatistical service to a grant. Using the methods described, our biostatistics group returns more than $6 for each dollar spent on institutional support in 1998.