Medical Decision Making: A Health Economic Primer

This textbook offers a comprehensive theory of medical decision making under uncertainty, combining informative test theory with the expected utility hypothesis. The book shows how the parameters of Bayes’ theorem can be combined with a value function of health states to arrive at informed test and treatment decisions. The authors distinguish between risk neutral, risk averse and prudent decision makers and demonstrate the effects of risk preferences on physicians’ decisions. They analyze individual tests, multiple tests and endogenous tests where the test result is determined by the decision maker. Finally, the topic is examined in the context of health economics by introducing a trade-off between enjoying health and consuming other goods, so that the extent of treatment and thus the potential improvement in the patient’s health become endogenous.

Prof. Dr. Stefan Felder holds the Chair of Health Economics at the Economics Department of the Duisburg-Essen University. He studied economics and sociology, received his Ph.D. and his venia docendi from the University of Bern. He worked and taught at the University of Western Ontario (1990/92), University of Zurich (1992/1996) and University of Fribourg (1993/95) before joining the Faculties of Medicine and Economics at the University of Magdeburg in 1997. He currently is the general secretary of the German Association of Health Economics. From 2011, he will take over the Endowed Chair of Health Economics at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

Thomas Mayrhofer is a Research Associate in the Doctoral Program in Economics at the Chair of Health Economics, University Duisburg-Essen.