Read Response 1 Health metrics play a critical role in shaping policy decisions and guiding the allocation of resources within healthcare systems. Among these metrics, Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) and Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) stand out as prominent instruments for evaluating health interventions. These measurements serve as invaluable tools for policymakers and healthcare professionals to facilitate the allocation of resources to maximize cost-effectiveness and benefit the most people possible. As healthcare systems increasingly emphasize evidence-based decision-making, the discussion surrounding these health metrics becomes more necessary and relevant. In his work 'QALYs, DALYs, and their critics,' Greg Bognar delves into …show more content…
Health metrics offer policymakers valuable insights into patient care and treatment options. In the chapter, Bognar introduces the importance of QALYs and DALYs through a comparison of morbidity and mortality, fundamental concepts in epidemiology. He highlights the limitations of solely analyzing these measures by demonstrating that mortality quantifies the number of deaths within a population, while morbidity assesses the prevalence of illness, but does not describe a population’s health as a whole. Despite their exceedingly important contribution to epidemiology and public policy, Bognar argues that QALYs and DALYs provide superior assessments of health overall. He emphasizes this by stating, "Any adequate measure of health, therefore, must be …show more content…
This demonstrates the poor quality of life experienced by HIV patients, as indicated by DALYs and QALYs. While Bognar does not explicitly discuss this specific example, he notes in his article that these health metrics are crucial indicators for the allocation of funds for various illnesses. The HIV epidemic serves as a current event example that adds credibility to Bognar’s argument. Although there are ethical concerns with these two metrics, they are saving numerous lives, thereby exhibiting their success and proving Bognar's argument that these metrics are effective. The author accurately provides a comprehensive overview of the components, purpose, and concerns with the health metrics QALYs and DALYs. His original argument is that, notwithstanding their ethical concerns, these methods have proved to be significant contributors to policy initiatives, resource allocation, and viable information regarding specific illnesses. Through his description of the quality and quantity factors of both metrics, it becomes clear that these metrics are imperative; without them, many lives would be lost, along with quality of
Jahi McMath is a 13-year-old girl living in Oakland, CA who was declared brain dead by multiple neurologists more than three months ago. Jahi was declared brain-dead December 12th after barriers during surgery a few days earlier to remove her tonsils, adenoids, and uvula at Children's Hospital & Research Center Oakland. At least three neurologists confirmed that Jahi was unable to breathe on her own, had no blood flow to her brain, and had no sign of electrical activity in her brain. Moreover, a court order kept Jahi's body on a ventilator while independent experts could be brought in to confirm the results (Wells, 2014). Even so, the McMath family was able to secure the release of Jahi's body through the county coroner, who issued a death certificate, and have been keeping her on a ventilator at an undisclosed facility ever since. This all occurred after Children’s Hospital released Jahi due to her severe brain damage along with the probability of the hospital receiving profit from discharging Jahi before her or her family were ready for her to be released (Johnson and Rhodes, 2010, p. 61).
...nts of Health and the Prevention of Health Inequities. Retrieved 2014, from Australian Medical Association: https://ama.com.au/position-statement/social-determinants-health-and-prevention-health-inequities-2007
‘Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation’ is a white paper which was initiated in 1999. The Department of Health (DOH) ordered strategies aimed at reducing ill-health with specific attention to cancer, coronary heart disease and stroke, accidents, and mental health. £21billion over 10years was given to the NHS to ensure a target of 20% reduction in deaths associated with these conditions.
This assignment will identify some of the impacts, interventions and outcomes in relation to patient’s quality of life measured against activities of living from Roper, Logan and Tierney.
CUA is a type of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA), which both aim to dissect the incremental expenses and incremental consequences between the options, although CUA will include societal or patient preferences to adjust the outcomes including additional years of life saved. The CUA analysis is appropriately utilized to compare two different drugs or procedures in which the benefits may be different3. When utilizing the CUA technique, the numerator that is used is a cost measure consisting of the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) while the denominator used is the quality adjusted life year (QALY). The QALYs as defined above are expressed in terms of life years saved and are weighted to account for quality (QALYs) or disability (DALYs). The QALY represents both survival and quality of life (QoL) benefits connected with the utilization of a healthcare
Berwick, D. M. (2002). A user's manual for the IOM's 'quality chasm' report. Health Affairs,
The patients should receive safe and appropriate care in return for payment equal to the level of care received (“What is Value-Based Care”, 2016). For providers, this means using affordable and proven treatments while also catering to the patient’s needs (“What is Value-Based Care”, 2016). Additionally, this model is built upon measurement which when relayed to the patient will inform them of the scope and cost of their care. Examples of measures that are tracked, provided by the article “What is Value-Based Care,” include: procedural complications, hospital-acquired infections, and readmissions; providers face penalties if these metrics are unacceptable (“What is Value-Based Care”,
The overall health scores are based on determinants as well as outcomes. Behavioral determinants include: smoking, binge drinking, drug deaths, obesity, physical inactivity, and high school graduation rate. Community and environmental determinants include: violent crime, occupational fatalities, infectious diseases, children in poverty, and air pollution. Public and health policy determinants include: lack of health insurance, public health funding, and number of adolescent and children immunizations. Clinical care determinants include: accessibility to early prenatal care, availability of primary care physicians and dentists, and preventable hospitalizations. Finally, several different outcomes are used to determine the overall score. Those include: development of diabetes, poor mental and physical health days, disparity in health status, infant mortality, cardiovascular disease, cancer deaths, and premature deaths.
National health systems are assessed by the extent to which expenditure and actions in public health and medical care contributes to the crucial social goals of improving health, increasing access to quality healthcare, reducing health disparities, protecting citizens from penury due to medical e...
A quality-adjusted life year (QALYs) is one of the most widely used measures for measuring the quality of life and is used for the assessment of health outcomes. Health is a function of length of life and quality of life (Prieto and Sacristán, 2003) and this measure serves as composite indicator which allows quantity and quality of life in a single ind...
Shugarman, L. R. & Whitenhill, K. (2011). The affordable care act proposes new provisions to build a stronger continuum of care. Journal of the American Society on Aging, 35(1).
In 1948, the World Health Organisation (WHO) defined health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’1, which has sparked significant controversy in the medical community. This is in large part due to the word ‘complete’ being included in the definition, as this may no longer be applicable to a modern population of aging patients with chronic conditions. New medical technologies and advancements in public understanding of wellbeing and illness can be directly associated with the growing healthcare epidemic: as awareness of medical conditions increases, more diagnoses are made. This means that most of the population could be described as unhealthy, as what may once have been viewed as a normal variation is now be associated with a health condition.
The purpose of this paper is to exam a Healthy People 2020 health topic. This paper will discuss HIV; human immunodeficiency virus. This paper will assess, interpret, justify, evaluate and appraise HIV disease, its history, health statistics, preventive measures, the role of the nurse and finally an appraisal of the health programs and availability of supportive care.
Most clinical studies express gains in health in terms of disease-specific measures, such as number of heart attacks avoided or cases of influenza prevented. Although this is useful for particular treatments related to those health conditions, those measures do not allow for comparison across diseases. To solve this, the concept of quality-adjusted life years
HIV does not only affect the well-being of individuals, it has large impacts on households, communities and even nations as a whole. Peer discussions and personal research has also made me realize that some of the countries suffering from this HIV epidemic also rather unfortunately suffer from other infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, relative poverty and economic stagnation. Despite these setbacks, new inte...