Name and Synonyms
Quality Adjusted Life Years Scale (QALYs).
Source Article
Weinstein MC.J Health Econ. 1988 Sep;7(3):289-90.
Description
A quality-adjusted life year (QALY) is a measure of a person's life expectancy and the quality of the remaining life-years. Although one treatment might help someone
live longer, it might also have serious side effects. The Quality
Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) is a measure of disease burden,
including both the quality and the quantity of life lived. The method
helps to measure these factors so that one can compare different
treatments for the same condition.The QALY is based on the number of
years of life that would be added by the intervention. The main
objective of QALYs is to combine morbidity and mortality into a single
weighted measure. Thus, a QALY gives an idea of how many extra months
or years of life of a reasonable quality a person might gain as a
result of treatment.
QALY
scale
is especially used in assessing the value for money of a medical
intervention. QALY is an important and increasingly used economic
measure of the relative impact of healthcare interventions. The QALY
scale is for adult patients, and can be
used for all diseases.
Structure / Content
There is no questionnaire. The QALY is calculated based on the expected duration of life and degree of diability.
Scoring Method
The years in perfect health is assigned the
value of 1.0 down to a value of 0.0 for death. If the extra years would
be lived in ill health, for example if the patient wheelchair-bounded,
then the extra life-years are given a value between 0 to 1. It should
be noted that, some health states may be considered worse than death
and have negative scores.
An example*: Lets assume the patient A has a serious disease.
The new treatment is compared with standard care in terms of the QALYs gained:
Therefore, the new treatment leads to 0.35 additional QALYs (that is: 0.75 -0.4 QALY = 0.35 QALYs).
Assume that the cost of the new drug is $10,000, and standard treatment costs $3000.
Another example:
Language and translations
It is in US English. No translations.
Scientific Spine's Comment
QALY allow for the assessment of the value of an intervention in comparison with other interventions for the same disease.To ensure a health-related decision is fair, a standard method to compare different treatments and measure their clinical effectiveness is required. The QALY tries to satisfy that need. QALYs have been criticised because there is an implication that some patients will be refused or not offered treatment for the sake of other patients.
ReferencesWeinstein MC.J Health Econ. 1988 Sep;7(3):289-90.
* http://www.nice.org.uk/newsroom/features/measuringeffectivenessandcosteffectivenesstheqaly.jsp
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