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.
A
- Actuarial Projection
- An estimate of future events, such as mortality, morbidity, or claims costs, based on statistical analysis of historical data patterns.
- All-Cause Mortality
- The rate of death from any cause within a defined population, unlike cause-specific mortality, which measures deaths from one particular condition.
B
- Background Mortality
- The rate of death from causes unrelated to the disease being studied, applied within a model alongside any additional disease-specific mortality risk.
- Burden of Illness
- The total impact of a disease on individuals and society, covering mortality, morbidity, and economic costs, commonly quantified using DALYs.
C
- Cancer Burden
- The total impact of cancer on individuals and society, covering mortality, morbidity, and healthcare costs, commonly quantified using disability-adjusted life years.
- Cardiovascular Disease Burden
- The total impact of cardiovascular disease on a population, typically quantified using disability-adjusted life years, mortality rates, and healthcare expenditure.
- Cause-Specific Mortality
- The rate of death attributable to a particular disease within a defined population, calculated separately from deaths due to other causes.
- Clinical Impact Analysis
- An impact analysis focused on a programme's effect on clinical outcomes, such as disease incidence or mortality, rather than broader measures.
- Comprehensive Benefit Assessment
- A benefit assessment that considers several outcome domains at once, including mortality, morbidity, and quality of life.
- Cure Fraction Model
- A survival model separating a population into a cured subgroup facing only background mortality and an uncured subgroup remaining at risk of the disease event.
D
- Dfle CalculationDFLE
- The process of computing disability-free life expectancy using a life table combining age-specific mortality rates with age-specific disability prevalence.
- Disease Burden
- The total impact of a disease on a population, covering mortality, morbidity, and costs, commonly quantified using disability-adjusted life years.
E
- Excess Mortality
- The additional death risk attributable to a specific condition, the difference between an affected population's observed mortality and that of a comparable unaffected group.
G
- Gompertz Distribution
- A probability distribution characterised by a hazard rate rising exponentially with time, originally developed to describe human mortality increasing with age.
- Gompertz Model
- A survival model based on the Gompertz distribution, assuming the hazard rate rises exponentially over time, a pattern common in age-related mortality.
H
- Hale CalculationHALE
- The process of computing health-adjusted life expectancy, combining mortality data with health state prevalence and severity weights into one summary measure.
- Health Expectancy
- A general term for measures combining mortality and morbidity data to estimate expected years lived in a specified health state, such as disability-free.
I
- Inpatient Quality Indicator
- A standardised measure assessing inpatient stay care quality, covering hospital mortality, procedure utilisation, and complex procedure volume.
L
- Life Expectancy
- The average number of years an individual of a given age is expected to live, based on current age-specific mortality rates.
- Life Table
- A tabular record of a population's mortality experience, showing the probability of death at each age and the resulting survivors over time.
- Lookup Table
- A data structure storing precomputed values, such as mortality rates or unit costs, indexed for quick retrieval within a health economic model.
M
- Mixture Cure Model
- A cure model treating the population as a mixture of a cured fraction facing only background mortality and an uncured fraction remaining at risk.
- Morbidity
- The state of being affected by a disease, covering associated symptoms, functional impairment, and reduced quality of life, unlike mortality.
- Mortality
- The occurrence of death within a defined population, commonly measured using rates expressing deaths relative to population size over time.
- Mortality Management
- The clinical and administrative processes used to review and learn from patient deaths occurring within an organisation's care.
- Mortality Measure
- A quality indicator assessing patient death rate associated with a condition, procedure, or hospitalisation, typically risk-adjusted for patient severity.
- Mortality Rate
- A measure of death frequency within a defined population over a specified period, typically expressed per thousand or per hundred thousand people.
O
- Outcome Quality Indicator
- A specific, measurable metric assessing actual health results, such as mortality or complications, used to evaluate a provider's clinical performance.
P
- Potential Life Years
- A measure of premature mortality calculated as the years of life lost when death occurs before a specified reference age, such as seventy.
R
- Respiratory Disease Burden
- The total impact of respiratory diseases on a population, covering mortality, morbidity, and healthcare costs, commonly quantified using disability-adjusted life years.
- Risk of Mortality
- A classification indicating the likelihood a patient will die during hospitalisation, based on diagnoses and clinical characteristics, used to risk-adjust comparisons.
S
- Self-Rated Health
- A single-item measure asking individuals to rate their own overall health, shown to independently predict future mortality and healthcare use.
- Sepsis Economics
- The application of health economic evaluation to sepsis, a life-threatening infection response condition with substantial mortality and intensive care costs.
- Severity of Disease
- A measure of how serious a condition is, assessed by factors such as expected mortality or reduction in quality-adjusted life expectancy if untreated.
- 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.
- Standardised Mortality Ratio ApplicationStandardized Mortality Ratio Application
- The use of a standardised mortality ratio to adjust survival estimates for background mortality within a health economic model.
- Sullivan Method
- A technique for calculating health expectancy measures by combining age-specific mortality rates from a life table with age-specific prevalence rates of disability.
T
- 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.
Y
- Years of Life Lost
- A premature mortality measure calculated as the difference between age at death and a reference life expectancy, summed across deaths from a cause.
- Years Of Potential Life
- A measure of premature mortality summing the gap between a reference age and age at death, across all deaths occurring before that age.