OBJECTIVES: Health economic evaluations mostly present decision makers results without taking local constraints into account. This might influence the actual usefulness of studies and, more importantly, result in suboptimal decisions. Human resource constraints have been recently raised as a constraint that is of particular importance, especially in low and middle income countries. This review article aims to explore to what extent human resource constraints are taken into account in economic evaluations.  METHODS: We conducted systematic literature review via 7 electronic databases and then consulted some experts for additional relevant articles. We searched for articles that investigate economic evaluations and mention human resource constraints. Subsequently, these articles were classified based on to what extent they addressed human resource constraints. We distinguished the categories ‘ignoring’, ‘dealing’ and ‘relaxing’ human resource constraints. Furthermore, we classified studies into modelling studies and studies based on primary data.  RESULTS: We found 200 articles, approximately. The findings show that 164 articles ignore the constraints, accounting for 88 and 76 articles of primary data use and modelling use, respectively. Only 32 articles deal with or relax the constraints. Of these articles, 27 articles focus on the task shifting and the rest of them were distributed to the categories of dealing and relaxing, almost equally between modelling use and primary data use. CONCLUSIONS: Many cost effectiveness studies were conducted in settings in which human resource constraints are important. Although this is acknowledged, human resource constraints are often ignored in health economic evaluations. This practice results in biased estimates of the cost-effectiveness of interventions and misinforms decision makers. Guidance on how to properly deal with human resource constraints in cost-effectiveness analyses is needed.