An empirical study on utility assessment methods for quality adjusted life years (QALYs)

Abstract

Cost-Utility Analysis (CUA) seems to have high potential in that through it we can compare different sets of health care programmes. Therefore，this study examines the methodological issues of CUA.

Through a survey of almost 170 nurses we studied utility assessment methods for quality adjusted life years(QALYs)，which is an important indication of the utility of CUA. Ther esults are follows;

1) When the subjects are health care staff，questionnaires are more useful than interview methods for utility assessment.

2) Among the three utility assessment methods of Standard Gamble，Time Trade-off and Person Trade-off, Person Trade-off seems to be the most prominent method for various reasons; for example，the context of Person Trade-off is quite similar to the resource allocation settings.