Failure to Rescue
A measure of the rate at which patients with a serious post-surgical complication subsequently die, indicating a hospital's ability to respond effectively.
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.
Falls Rate
A measure of how frequently hospitalised patients experience a fall within a facility, a key patient safety and prevention indicator.
Fieller Method
A technique for calculating a confidence interval around the ratio of two normally distributed variables, useful for measures such as the ICER.
Financial Ratio
A quantitative measure derived from an organisation's financial statements, used to assess liquidity, solvency, or profitability.
Finite Difference Method
A numerical method that approximates derivatives using finite differences to solve differential equations.
Finite Element Method
A numerical method that divides a complex domain into smaller elements to approximate the solution of differential equations.
Finite Mixture Model
A statistical model representing a population as a combination of a finite number of distinct subgroups, each following its own probability distribution.
Finite Precision
The limitation of computer arithmetic arising from the use of a fixed number of digits to represent numerical values.
First-Order Index
A variance-based sensitivity measure, also called a Sobol index, quantifying the share of a model's output variance from a single parameter varying alone.
Fixed Effect Model
A meta-analysis model assuming all included studies estimate the same true effect, with observed variation attributed entirely to sampling error.
Fixed Effect Synthesis
An approach to combining evidence assuming all studies estimate a single common true effect, weighting purely by statistical precision.
Fixed Effects
A panel data modelling approach estimating a separate intercept for each individual or group, controlling for all its time-invariant characteristics.
Fixed-Point Iteration
An iterative numerical method that repeatedly applies a function until successive estimates converge to a stable solution.
Fleming-Harrington Estimator
A statistical technique for estimating the survival function from censored data, more flexible than the Kaplan-Meier estimator in weighting events over time.
Fleming-Harrington Test
A hypothesis test comparing survival distributions between groups, generalising the log-rank test by allowing different weights for events at different follow-up times.
Flexible Parametric Model
A class of survival models using flexible functions, such as restricted cubic splines, to represent the hazard or survival function beyond standard distributions.
Floating-Point Arithmetic
The method used by computers to represent and perform calculations on real numbers with finite precision.
Folding Back
The process of calculating a decision tree's expected values by working backward from final outcomes toward the initial decision node.
Force of Infection
The rate at which susceptible individuals become infected, determined jointly by disease prevalence and the rate and probability of transmission per contact.
Forward Difference
A finite-difference method that approximates a derivative using the current function value and a value at a subsequent point.