Health Status and Health Policy: Quality of Life in Health Care Evaluation and Resource Allocation

This practical work provides a systematic guide to state-of-the-art development and application of health status and quality-of-life measures for health care policy and research. It explains how to allocate health resources by comparing costs and outcomes of alternative health policies to identify those with greatest benefit in relation to cost. The book outlines how to collect and organize data to calculate the cost per year of healthy life gained for competing interventions. The use of these data in a social and political decision-making process based on community values and objectives is then discussed. Valuable guidelines are presented for assessing health and quality of life in program evaluation, monitoring of health policy, clinical trials, and health services research. Each chapter contributes to the development and application of health and quality of life outcomes to the major health decisions in the 1990s, including preventing disease and promoting health, assessing the costs and benefits of technology, and improving health care access.

Donald L. Patrick, Professor of Health Services, University of Washington. Pennifer Erickson, Chief, Clearinghouse on Health Indexes, National Center for Health Statistics.