This document describes the findings of a statistical analysis of the determinants of utilisation of National Health Service inpatient facilities by small areas in England. It forms part of a study by the University of York commissioned by the NHS Executive. The primary purpose of the study was...

A review of relevant literature within health economics, psychology and moral philosophy suggests that people want resource allocation decisions in health to be informed by considerations of equity as well as efficiency. A number of empirical studies demonstrate that people are willing to...

The quality of primary care should ultimately be judged on the effect of health outcome of individual patients. However, for the foreseeable future, it is inconceivable that the necessary data will be available to implement this principle. And in any case, specification of the necessary...

The NHS Executive has recently implemented modifications to the weighted capitation formula for distributing Hospital and Community Health Service funds to health authorities in England. A major contribution to the changes was an analysis of the relative needs of geographical areas undertaken by...

Every year the United Kingdom central government assesses the relative spending needs of English local authorities in respect of the services for which is it responsible. This is done by estimating a Standard Spending Assessment (SSA) for each service, which is intended to indicate the spending...

Despite uncertainty being intrinsic to economic evaluation of health care, existing techniques for handling uncertainty remain underdeveloped compared to the formal techniques commonly applied in the business sector. This paper develops an alternative approach to handling uncertainty in economic...

The NHS Plan, published in July 2000, presented an ambitious blueprint for the transformation of the way the NHS delivers health care. The backdrop to the Plan is the substantial increase in resources for the NHS promised for the next 5 years. At the heart of the Plan is the aim of ensuring...

This paper examines the relationship between acute NHS Trust star ratings in England (generated by the Department of Health) in 2000/01 and 2001/02 with various other Trust characteristics and performance indicators from a Trust level database maintained by the Centre for Health Economics. The...

For most individuals, the use made of health care in a given year is determined principally by unpredictable random incidents. Of course, some individuals have a predictably higher predisposition to illness than others. However, the general consensus is that only a fraction of individual...

The Healthbasket project seeks to offer evidence on the basket of services offered by the health system in nine member states, and the costs and prices associated with those services. A specific objective of the project is “to identify what are the existing possibilities for and limitation to...