Measuring and Valuing Health Benefits for Economic Evaluation

There are not enough resources in health care systems around the world to fund all technically feasible and potentially beneficial health care interventions. Difficult choices have to be made, and economic evaluation offers a systematic and transparent process for informing such choices. A key component of economic evaluation is how to value the benefits of health care in a way that permits comparison between health care interventions. In addition, the establishment of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and similar bodies around the world which require cost-effectiveness evidence to be in the form of incremental cost per QALY has resulted in an explosion of theoretical and empirical work in the field. This is the first comprehensive textbook concerning the measurement and valuation of health benefits for economic evaluation, an area which continues to be a major source of debate. The books addresses the key questions in the measurement and valuation of health, including: the definition of health, the techniques of valuation, who should provide the values, techniques for modelling health state values, the appropriateness of tools in children and vulnerable groups, cross cultural issues, and the problem of choosing the right instrument. The book concludes with a discussion of the way forward in light of the substantial methodological differences, the role of normative judgements, and where further research is most likely to take this fascinating component of health economics.

ISBN 0198569823   Pages 360 ISBN13 9780198569824 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Oxford University Press   Weight (grammes) 510 Imprint Oxford University Press   Published in Oxford Format Paperback   Height (mm) 234 Publication date 11 Jan 2007   Width (mm) 156 Library of Congress 2006032634   Spine width (mm) 20 DEWEY 338.433621   Academic level Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

1		The purpose and scope of this book		1
2		Introduction to the measurement and valuation of health		7
3		Foundations in welfare economics and utility theory : what should be valued?		37
4		Describing health		55
5		Valuing health		83
6		Modelling health state valuation data		139
7		Using ordinal data to estimate cardinal valuations		159
8		Methods for obtaining health state values : generic preference-based measures of health and the alternatives		175
9		Design and analysis of health state valuation data for trial- and model-based economic evaluations		257
10		A QALY is a QALY is a QALY - or is it not?		287
11		Measuring and valuing health : an international perspective		299
12		Conclusions		317

This new text is indeed timely...[it's] a useful addition to the literature on economic evaluation. Pharmacoeconomics, Vol 25, No 4

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