HEALTH-STATUS MEASUREMENT AND THE ASSESSMENT OF MEDICAL-CARE

This article reviews the role of health status measures in the assessm ent of medical care. It is argued that such measures are of only limit ed value in assessing the performance of health care professionals and institutions because of confounding factors, problems of data collect ion and the play of chance, Nevertheless, health status measures shoul d be incorporated as outcome measures into clinical trials since they can provide information on how individuals and institutions can improv e performance and give health policy makers information about the effe ctiveness of interventions, It is concluded that the development of si mpler measures of performance would be more practical than trying to o vercome tbe limitations of health status measures in monitoring the qu ality of health care institutions. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.