OBJECTIVES The purpose this literature review is to investigate the application of multicriteria decision analysis and cost analysis methods within healthcare decision-making. METHODS A search of the literature was conducted using scintific databases. A combination of the following key words and phrases were inputted into these databases: Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Analytic Network Process (ANP), ELimination and Choice Expressing REality (ELECTRE), Goal programming, Grey relation analysis, Markov process, Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), CBA, CEA, and related words. The located articles were divided into the following twelve healthcare topics: evaluation of health information services; evaluation of the product development process; project and technology selection; pharmaceutics; healthcare management; therapy/treatment; management of medical waste; human resource planning in healthcare; organ transplantation; evaluation of healthcare policy; diagnostics; and shared decision-making with the patient. RESULTS Ninety research articles were retrieved and determined relevant. The pertinent articles were published between 1981 and 2013. It was found that the AHP is the most commonly used method in healthcare decision making (65 articles). AHP is mainly exploited in project and technology selection (22). The ANP method is utilized in the evaluation of health information services, project and technology selection, pharmaceutics and therapy/treatment. For the evaluation of healthcare policy AHP (11), CBA (1), CEA (1) and Grey relation analysis (1) were used. The TOPSIS, VIKOR, Markov process methods were utilized once in human resource planning in healthcare, healthcare management and therapy/treatment respectively. The CBA (4) and CEA (2) methods were especially useful for solving therapy/treatment tasks. CONCLUSIONS Multicriteria decision analysis and cost analysis offers a scientifically sound evaluation framework for healthcare management, where stakeholder interests are of crucial concern and complex criteria that cannot easily be reduced to simple monetary expressions, can be assessed  in resource limited settings.