The optical services market has been altered substantially by government legislation over the past six years. Further deregulation has been proposed which would alter the content and structure of the eye test, resulting in a two-tier test. This would split the refractive sight test, aimed at...

This paper reviews studies providing evidence of the cost-effectiveness of safe motherhood interventions in low-income countries. The economic case for investing in safe motherhood interventions is also examined. It is estimated that 1,600 women die globally each day as a result of problems...

Objective: to measure a health-related quality of life in a way that reflects salient features of health as perceived by a representative sample of the adult population of the UK. Choosing a descriptive system: with data from a survey of 600 people in the West Midlands, we appraised 6 existing...

Priority setting reflects ideology, and so, more surprisingly, does the quest for “efficiency”. A great deal of the current debate about alternative methods of finance and about reform of management structures, in health services all over the world, purports to be about some notion of...

A number of recent reports (for example, IPCS 1988, Griffiths 1988 and Beardshaw 1988) have served to highlight yet again the urgency of addressing the rights and needs of physically disabled people in respect of independence and full participation in society. The recent survey on the prevalence...

The combination of different skills used to provide particular types of primary and hospital care varies considerably from general practice to general practice and from hospital to hospital. Furthermore, skill mixes are changing rapidly as decision makers attempt both to reduce labour costs and...

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...

A central task in the field of health status measurement involves eliciting valuations for health states. When these valuations are then used in estimating patient benefit as part of a cost-utility analysis, a key issue is how the duration of a health state affects its value. Previous studies...

This document is intended as a use guide for individuals and groups concerned with planning for and management of a CT scanner in a district general hospital.

Certain rules have been developed on the minimum increases in public spending needed to cover the costs of aging and the costs of new technology. In practice elderly people only use certain kinds of service and much of the increase has had to be used to finance changes in other services. From...