The health economist's point of view concerning quality of life

Abstract

The interest in quality of life assessments in health care has grown during recent years. From the economist's point of view, quality of life is an appropriate outcome measure in economic assessments of health care as a tool in setting priorities. In quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) improvements in the length of life and in its quality are amalgamated into one single index. Different types of medical interventions can be compared by calculations of costs per gained QALY. Unsolved problems still remain with QALYs, and alternative outcome measures, which are said to take the patient's true preferences into account in a better manner, have been suggested. However, all these measures are similar in that they are designed to capture the patient's preferences with regard to both the length and the quality of life in one single index. With scarce resources within the health care sector, measures like QALYs provide a powerful guide in priority settings.