The development of performance indicators for the NHS has resulted in renewed interest in regression-based measures of hospital performance. This paper considers three regression-based measures of hospital efficiency, including the index of hospital ‘costliness’ proposed by Martin Feldstein...

General medical practice has changed significantly in the past ten years, reflecting a range of innovations giving greater priority to health prevention and promotion and to primary health care generally. One consequence has been a rapid increase in the number of practice nurses. Since 1988 the...

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...

In a budget constrained healthcare system the decision to invest in strategies to improve the implementation of cost-effective technologies must be made alongside decisions regarding investment in the technologies themselves and investment in further research. This paper presents a single,...

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...