In health economics, the value that resources, used in a particular way, would have if used in the best possible or another specified alternative way. When opportunity costs exceed the value the resources have in the way they are being used, they represent lost opportunities to get value from the resources. One opportunity cost of devoting physician time to tertiary care is the lost value of devoting the same time to primary care. Opportunity costs are the appropriate cost concept to consider when making resource allocation decisions. Actual costs often, but not always, can be assumed to represent (be proportional to) opportunity costs.