Dictionary
The Dictionary provides concise definitions of health economics terms, arranged alphabetically for quick reference. Use it to understand unfamiliar terminology or confirm the meaning of a specific term.
P
- Procedural Consent
- The specific informed consent process addressing a particular medical or surgical procedure's risks, benefits, and alternatives, obtained beforehand.
- Prostate Cancer Screening
- A public health strategy using PSA blood testing to detect prostate cancer in asymptomatic men, debated given the risk of overdiagnosis.
- Protective Factor
- A characteristic, behaviour, or exposure associated with a reduced risk of a particular disease or health outcome.
Q
- Quality Assessment
- The general process of systematically evaluating a study's methodological rigour and trustworthiness, covering design, risk of bias, and reporting completeness.
- Quality Assessment Model
- A structured tool or checklist systematically evaluating research methodological quality against predefined criteria, such as the Cochrane risk of bias tool.
- Quality of Evidence
- A judgement about how much confidence can be placed in an effect estimate, based on study design, risk of bias, and precision.
- Quality Uncertainty
- A condition in which buyers cannot reliably judge a good's quality before purchase, risking markets dominated by lower-quality offerings.
R
- Rate RatioRRate
- A measure comparing the incidence rates of an outcome between two groups, accounting for differences in person-time at risk.
- Readmission Management
- The strategies used to identify patients at high risk of hospital readmission and implement targeted interventions to prevent avoidable returns.
- Real-World Evidence
- Clinical evidence about a medical product's use, benefits, or risks derived from analysing real-world data, unlike evidence from a controlled trial.
- Reinsurance
- An arrangement in which an insurer transfers a portion of its financial risk to another insurer in exchange for a premium.
- Relative Measure
- A measure of effect expressed as a ratio comparing two groups, such as relative risk, rather than as an absolute difference.
- Relative Value Unit
- A unit quantifying resources required for a US Medicare service, incorporating physician work, practice expense, and malpractice risk components.
- REMS
- Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, a required manufacturer safety programme for medications with serious safety concerns, such as restricted distribution.
- Resource-Based Relative Value
- A methodology determining physician reimbursement based on a standardised measure of resources required, incorporating work, practice expense, and malpractice risk.
- Rubella Economics
- The application of health economic evaluation to rubella, a viral infection posing serious birth defect risk if contracted during pregnancy.
S
- Safety Evidence
- Data documenting the adverse effects and overall risk profile of an intervention, generated through trials and ongoing post-market surveillance.
- Scope Sensitivity
- The degree to which a stated valuation rises appropriately with the scale of the good being valued, such as a larger risk reduction.
- Screening Economics
- The application of health economic evaluation to programmes testing asymptomatic individuals for early disease signs, from cancer to cardiovascular risk factors.
- Screening in Insurance
- A process where an insurer designs a menu of policy options intended to lead individuals to reveal their private risk information through their own choice.
- Self-Funded Plan
- An arrangement where an employer itself assumes financial risk for employee healthcare claims, rather than purchasing a fully insured policy.
- Self-Insurance
- An arrangement where an organisation retains financial responsibility for its own risk, such as employee healthcare claims, rather than transferring it.
- Separating Equilibrium
- A market outcome in which different risk types choose different options, revealing their true type to the other party in the transaction.
- Serious Adverse Event
- An untoward medical occurrence during research or treatment resulting in death, life-threatening risk, hospitalisation, or persistent significant disability, per international guidance.
- Severity of Illness
- A classification indicating how clinically serious a condition is, based on physiological instability and organ involvement, used to risk-adjust comparisons.
- Shared Frailty
- An extension of the frailty model in which individuals within the same group are assumed to share a common unobserved risk effect.
- Smart Alert
- A computerised clinical alert using more sophisticated logic, such as patient-specific risk factors, to reduce clinically insignificant notifications compared with simpler rule-based alerts.
- Socioeconomic Adjustment
- A modification to a risk adjustment or payment formula accounting for added costs of caring for socioeconomically disadvantaged populations.
- Standardised Mortality RatioStandardized Mortality Ratio
- A measure comparing actual deaths observed within a population against statistically expected deaths given its risk characteristics, above one meaning worse.
- Static Model
- A model representing costs and outcomes at a single point in time, or that ignores how one individual's risk depends on others.
- Stop-Loss Provision
- A contractual clause within a risk-sharing arrangement limiting a provider's maximum financial exposure to unexpectedly high claims costs.
- Suicide Prevention
- Interventions and policies reducing suicide incidence, covering crisis hotlines, means restriction policies, and targeted clinical care for at-risk individuals.
- Surgical Consent
- The specific informed consent process addressing a proposed surgical procedure's risks, benefits, and alternatives, obtained before surgery.
T
- Targeted Screening
- A screening approach offering testing specifically to individuals identified as higher risk for a condition, rather than an entire general population.
- Third-Party Administrator
- An organisation providing administrative services, such as claims processing, for a self-insured employer's plan, without bearing the claims' financial risk.
- TIA Economics
- The application of health economic evaluation to transient ischaemic attacks, brief stroke-like episodes warning of future stroke risk, emphasising rapid diagnosis.
- Time-Inhomogeneous Model
- A Markov model in which transition probabilities are allowed to vary over the time horizon, such as mortality risk rising with age.
- Tobacco Use Prevalence
- A measure of the proportion of a population currently using tobacco products, a leading modifiable chronic disease risk factor.
- Toxoplasmosis Economics
- The application of health economic evaluation to toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection posing particular risks to immunocompromised patients and fetal development.
- Tunnel State
- A modelling technique creating temporary, time-specific states a patient passes through in sequence, letting a Markov model approximate time-dependent risk.
U
- Underwriting
- The process by which an insurer evaluates the risk of a potential policyholder and determines whether to offer coverage and at what price.
- Undue Inducement
- An offer so substantial it could overwhelm a prospective participant's rational judgement about risk, compromising the voluntariness of their consent.
V
- Vaccine Effectiveness
- The degree to which a vaccine reduces disease risk under real-world conditions in a general population, unlike efficacy measured under trial conditions.
- Vaccine Efficacy
- The degree to which a vaccine reduces disease risk among vaccinated individuals under the controlled conditions of a clinical trial.
- Value of Statistical LifeVSL
- A monetary estimate of the value society places on reducing the risk of death, derived from willingness to pay for a small risk reduction.
- Vulnerable Population
- A group at heightened risk of poor health outcomes or reduced access due to socioeconomic disadvantage, age, disability, or minority status.
W
- Waiver of Consent
- A regulatory determination permitting research to proceed without standard informed consent under narrowly defined conditions, such as minimal risk studies.
- Watchful Waiting
- A management approach for slow-growing or low-risk conditions involving close monitoring over time without immediate active treatment.
- Witnessed Consent
- A consent process in which an independent third party observes and attests to a patient providing informed consent, for higher-risk procedures.