WP5: Health Services Indicators
Objectives:
· To develop indicators on the provision of health services, including output, inputs and productivity and quality adjustments using outcomes.
· To investigate the diffusion of new and changed procedures and their implications for output indicators.
· To measure value for money indicators
· To analyse the comparative performance of health sectors in selected countries.
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WP5 leader: Matilde Mas ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
Full details of the workpackage can be found in the description of work.
This work programme will compare the relative merits of productivity and value for money measures, focusing on the healthcare sector, and looking at both outputs and inputs. WP5 will first consider the feasibility of gathering the data necessary to construct performance indicators, both outputs and input use, in Europe and the US. It will use more detailed data in an attempt to measure cost weighted activity indices for selected countries and compare with input use. Countries which have the required detailed activity data include the UK, Germany and Hungary and Spain and the analysis for these will be supplemented by adding countries where much of the required data appears to be publicly available such as Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands.
The second important contribution of this work package is to show how to use outcome data to quality adjust the activity-based output estimates. This will review the literature on health metrics and ascertain to what extent available measures can be employed to adjust for quality of life. The introduction of new services raises similar issues to those for quality adjustments. Data will be examined for evidence of new procedures and changes to procedures so as to establish how these have diffused and the implications of this for output indicators
In market services it is usual to use productivity measures defined as real (quality adjusted) output per unit of input, which can be considered consistent with ‘value for money’ measures. However, non-market services are rife with imperfections (e.g. information asymmetry, public funding, and/or insurance companies creating a wedge between the consumer and the service provider), meaning that productivity measures might give different answers from value for money measures. Therefore, this work programme will compare the relative merits of productivity and value for money measures in the healthcare sector.
Finally WP5 will examine how the comparative performance of health sectors in a few countries varies according the indicators employed. This will also consider the extent to which performance differences across countries are influenced by demographic factors, in particular the age structure of populations.
