Measuring Health Outcomes — Putting Gains into Perspective

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Abstract
Patients, providers, payers, politicians, and the public are keenly interested in evaluating the worthiness of diverse health care interventions. Sometimes the attention is focused on existing interventions (such as childhood immunizations); at other times the attention is on potential interventions (such as an AIDS vaccine). The evaluations are often problematic because the magnitude of changes in health outcomes is difficult to interpret. And most health care and safety interventions yield only small changes in the health of populations despite causing dramatic changes in the health of some patients.Researchers often assess health outcomes by counting adverse events (e.g., deaths and . . .