A health index and output measure

This is a review of the work done by this group over the past 20 years, and the aim was to specify minimal data requirements which could be recorded routinely using existing Hospital Activity Analysis Forms or obtained by minor modifications in the General Household Survey.

Abstract

This is a review of the work done by our group over the past 20 years. During this time some of the problems in designing global indices of health (see Refs 14, 20, 22, 23 and 32) and incorporating the same principles of utility measurement into studies of the output of services and in particular, of hospitals have been investigated27. Originally, the aim was to specify minimal data requirements which could be recorded routinely using existing Hospital Activity Analysis Forms, or obtained by minor modifications in the General Household Survey. Recently, more detailed descriptions which are necessary to produce a sensitive measure of change for clinical trials have been studied. This review will consider the following aspects of work: (a) background; (b) model (i.e. algebraic representation of health status); (c) implementation (from model to measure); (d) output measurement (application of model in Health service settings); (e) index of health (application of model to national community data); (f) towards a profile (detailed descriptors for use in clinical trials); (g) recent research (scaling of three-dimensional classification, time-related factors, the effect of diagnosis on the utility of health states and utilities representative of the population); (h) current research; and (i) conclusion (related to policy formation at regional and district levels).KeywordsOutput MeasureLife AssessmentHealth IndexStandard GambleGlobal IndexThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.