Children who come into care of Local Authorities are likely to have significantly poorer health statuses than other children. Foster carers play an increasingly important role as substitute families for such children, a valuable but scarce resource that is costly to recruit and retain. Despite...

There is growing acceptance of the need for improved outcome measures in monitoring and evaluating the impact of health care. Past emphasis on indicators of mortality and morbidity is being replaced with a greater awareness of the possibilities for measuring quality of life (QoL). This...

The methodology of valuing health states remains a key issue in the construction of health-related quality of life measures. Different scaling methods appear to yield different sets of valuations, and as yet there is no consensus as to which method is the preferred technique. Many of the...

QALYs (quality adjusted life years) represent a powerful addition to the range of evaluative techniques for use in assessing the impact of health care. In the past, such benefits have been portrayed in terms of their contribution to life expectancy. The ability to adjust for quality of life is...

Despite growing interest in the measurement of health-related quality of life, no single means of achieving such measurement has so far emerged as a standard. Researchers from 5 European and Scandinavian countries have jointly developed a common generic measure. The Euroqol questionnaire was...

This discussion paper presents data from the Department of Health funded Measurement and Valuation of Health survey conducted at the Centre for Health Economics in 1993. This was a nationally representative interview survey of 3395 men and women aged 18 or over living in the UK. Amongst other...

Although fairly detailed information on NHS inputs can be identified, little or no corresponding data on outcomes are available to those concerned with the management and delivery of health care. The absence of any significant outcome data is a longstanding problem which has so far been largely...

The Centre for Health Economics and National Institute of Economic and Social Research have recently completed a project funded by the Department of Health to improve measurement of the productivity of the NHS. The researchers have suggested better ways of measuring both outputs and inputs to...

An important consideration when establishing priorities in health care is the likely effects that alternative allocations of resources will have on health-related quality of life (HRQoL). This paper reports on the analysis of data from a study which elicited health state valuations (using the...

The measurement of health outcome is central to the evaluation of medical treatment and intervention. In the past, such measurement has been based on data relating to survival and life expectancy. There is now general acknowledgment that a through assessment of the benefits of health care must...