Death Spiral
A death spiral is a cycle in which rising health insurance premiums drive lower-risk members out, raising the pool's average cost and the next premium.
Encyclopaedia
Explore comprehensive, evidence-informed explanations of key health economics concepts, including their development, application and relationships to other concepts. Published entries are validated through human expert review.
Concepts, entries and ontology terms
A concept page is a published entry on the wiki. Some concepts also have a full encyclopaedia article. The Health Economics Ontology (HEO) holds every concept, including dictionary terms without an article, so it is larger than the list of published pages. The knowledge graph shows how concepts relate to each other.
Decentralization
Decentralization is the transfer of authority over health financing, purchasing or delivery from central government to regional, local or other bodies.
Decision
A decision in health economics is a choice between alternative uses of health care resources, such as funding a technology, informed by evidence.
Decision Aid
A decision aid is a tool that helps patients choose between treatment or screening options by setting out benefits and harms and clarifying their values.
Decision Algorithm
A decision algorithm is a fixed sequence of explicit rules that turns evidence into a decision, such as an outcome-level HTA benefit grade or a test order.
Decision Criteria
Decision criteria are the factors an HTA body weighs in a funding recommendation, such as clinical benefit, cost-effectiveness and severity.
Decision Making
Decision making in health care is the process by which payers, HTA bodies and clinicians choose between options using evidence, costs, criteria and values.
Decommissioning
Decommissioning is the formal step that ends funding or provision of a health service or technology, in full or for some patients, once judged low value.
Deductible
A deductible is the amount an insured person must pay for covered health care in a period before the insurance plan starts to pay its share.
Deliberative Process
A deliberative process is structured group discussion where experts and stakeholders weigh evidence and values to guide HTA or priority-setting decisions.
Demand
Demand is the schedule of quantities of a good or service, such as health care, that people are willing and able to buy at each price over a given period.
Demand Curve
A demand curve shows how much of a good or service, such as health care, is demanded at each price, other factors held fixed. It usually slopes downward.
Demand Forecasting
Demand forecasting projects future use of health services and medicines, and the staff needed, from past utilisation, population change and other drivers.
Development Assistance for Health
Development assistance for health (DAH) is the grants, loans and in-kind aid for health that development agencies give to low- and middle-income countries.
Devolution
Devolution is the transfer of formal responsibility and power over health services from central government to elected regional or local governments.
Diagnosis Related Group
A diagnosis related group (DRG) is a category of inpatient stays with similar diagnoses, procedures and expected costs, used to pay or fund hospitals.
Diagnosis-Based Risk Score
A diagnosis-based risk score uses a person's recorded diagnoses and demographics to predict their healthcare costs relative to a population average.
Diagnostic Safety
Diagnostic safety is avoiding harm and wasted care from missed, delayed or wrong diagnoses, through correct, timely diagnoses explained to patients.
Diffusion of Innovation
Diffusion of innovation is Rogers' theory of how new treatments and practices spread through a health system over time, via communication and imitation.
Digital Adoption
Digital adoption is the uptake and continued use of a digital health technology by patients, carers, clinicians or the organisations that provide care.