Friction Cost Method
A productivity loss valuation approach estimating only the cost of the finite period needed to restore normal production, generally lower than human capital estimates.
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.
Geometric Mean LOS
A statistical measure of typical diagnosis-related group length of stay, using geometric rather than arithmetic mean to reduce outlier influence.
Hale Calculation
The process of computing health-adjusted life expectancy, combining mortality data with health state prevalence and severity weights into one summary measure.
Health State Utility Value
A number, typically anchored between zero for dead and one for full health, representing the preference-based value of a specific health state.
Health State Valuation
The process of assigning a preference-based utility value to a described health state, typically using a choice-based or rating-based method.
Health Worker Density
A measure of the number of healthcare workers, such as physicians or nurses, available relative to the population they serve.
Health-Adjusted Life Year
A general term for outcome measures, including the QALY and DALY, combining length of life with a weighting for quality or disability into one unit.
Healthy Life Expectancy
A population health measure expressing the average years an individual is expected to live in good health, adjusting for time in disability.
Healthy Year Equivalent
An alternative to the QALY deriving its valuations directly from a sequence of health states over a lifetime, rather than combining separate utility values.
Human Capital Method
A method valuing illness or death's economic cost based on the market wages the affected individual would otherwise have earned.
Incremental Cost-Utility Ratio
The difference in cost between two interventions divided by the difference in quality-adjusted life years they produce.
Indirect Elicitation
A health state valuation approach in which a descriptive questionnaire's responses are converted into a utility value using a pre-existing scoring algorithm.
Indirect Utility Assessment
The process of obtaining a health state utility value by applying a scoring algorithm from a prior valuation study to a respondent's questionnaire answers.
Infection Rate
A measure of how frequently a specific type of infection occurs within a defined population and time period.
Interval Scaling
A measurement scale property in which numerical differences correspond to equal differences in the underlying quantity, allowing meaningful arithmetic operations.
Life Expectancy
The average number of years an individual of a given age is expected to live, based on current age-specific mortality rates.
Magnitude Estimation
A psychophysical scaling method in which respondents assign numbers to stimuli reflecting their perceived relative magnitude compared to a reference stimulus.
Malmquist Index
A productivity measure decomposing efficiency change over time into genuine technical progress versus change relative to an evolving best-practice frontier.
Mapping Algorithm
A statistical model predicting a health utility value from responses on a non-preference-based instrument, used when a preference-based measure was not collected.
Mapping Function
The specific statistical relationship, typically estimated through regression, used within a mapping algorithm to convert a health status score into a predicted utility value.