A NOTE ON HYE (HEALTHY YEARS EQUIVALENT)

This note presents a simplified description of the Healthy Years Equiv alent (HYE) health outcome measure. I examine the claims made for the HYE and discuss their theoretical validity. The HYE is shown to be con ceptually flawed because of confusions between the measures of value a nd the things being valued. Under close inspection the unnecessarily c omplicated multiple stage valuation used to determine the HYE is seen to be no more than an indirect way of asking the Time Trade-Off. For t his reason the claimed superiority of the method over the Quality Adju sted Life Year (QALY) is rejected.