Putting health economics into quality

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to provide a critical survey of the quality literature in health care from a health economics perspective. In particular it raises issues concerning the nature of the commodity health care, information asymmetry, measurement of health and non‐health outcomes such as reassurance and involvement in the decision‐making per se. Its aim is to contribute to the debate about how quality can be best defined. It concludes that if quality is to be patient centred, then one needs to know what it is that matters to patients (and their agents).