PHL281H1 Lecture 24: 24 cost benefit in medicine
Document Summary
How do we measure benefit in medicine in relation to cost: what benefit are we trying to achieve, calculating in monetary terms seems to miss the value of medicine. Measuring in terms of greater quality of life: problem: more ordinal rankings are needed, commensurability: different conditions have different impacts on patients, need way of indicating tradeoffs between quality and length of life. Calculating qaly: poll people to find out what kinds of tradeoffs they would make between length of life and a particular condition. Problems with calculating qalys: discrepancy between calculating with those who already have a particular condition and those who do not, whose opinion is more reliable, aggregating is problematic as disabled are minorities. Using qaly: decide between treatment modalities in conditions, decisions on how to allocate resources in health care system, not used to make decisions between particular patients, usually only used with statistical lives. Valuing qalys: how much should we spend on a single qaly.
