There has been increasing interest in the ability of different methods to rank efficient hospitals over their inefficient counterparts. The UK Department of Health has used three cost indices to benchmark NHS Trusts. This study uses the same dataset and compares the efficiency rankings from 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...

This discussion paper aims to synthesise a variety of reports and research projects conducted by the International Programme at the Centre for Health Economics, concerning the Vietnamese health system, over the past 4 years. In particular it focuses on the development of the state voluntary...

Pharmaceutical prescribing currently represents around 10% of total National Health Service expenditure, and is one of the most inflationary elements of spending (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 1993). Between 1980 and 1990, the overall cost of a prescription increased by 19%....

Disease management is attracting considerable attention from the pharmaceutical industry, which sees this as a way of extending its activities beyond drug development to health care management and organisation. However, it is unclear whether disease management offers advantages to the NHS or...

Convergence in health expenditure in the countries of the European Union (EU) has been demonstrated to be occurring in previous studies. The aim of this paper is to identify and discuss the reasons for this finding and to present new evidence confirming convergence in health outcomes, as...

The aim of this Discussion Paper is to estimate the social costs of back pain in the UK and assess the potential for reducing these costs by increasing the appropriateness of management of back pain. 50% to 80% of the population suffer from back pain at some stage of their life. With or without...

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...

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...

This paper examines the role of social health insurance in four European countries: Germany, Switzerland, France and the Netherlands. It attempts to elucidate the organisational structure, regulation and management of the social insurance schemes, as well as the relationships between the...