CARING - THE NEGLECTED HEALTH OUTCOME - OR INPUT

In most forms of evaluation of health care-and it is certainly true of economic evaluation-and in considering the outcomes of such care, car ing tends to be omitted, or simply forgotten. It is often the case tha t little more than lip service is paid to the inclusion of caring as a n input. This paper takes a closer look at caring, the neglected outco me of health care. The perspective starts from that of economics but o ther disciplines are examined briefly along the way to determine wheth er they deal better with caring than does the dismal science of econom ics. It is concluded that there is a need for greater consideration of caring as both an outcome and an input in evaluation of health care a nd that in the specific context of economic evaluation, when consideri ng caring, economists might usefully look to other disciplines to broa den and deepen their conceptualisation of both benefits and costs in t heir economic evaluation studies.