Quality of Life Research: Clinical Applications

Abstract

Concern over the rising costs of health care in the United States has focused attention on the young discipline of health services research. While outcomes of disease and treatment have always been important in medical care, at least implicitly, the new discipline of health services research has broken down the concept of outcomes explicitly and developed ways to measure them. The Behavioral Model of Health Services Use (Figure 1) provides a useful conceptual framework for understanding the health care system, including the factors that influence people accessing health care, their use of health services, and health outcomes. Health outcomes include consumer satisfaction, evaluated health status, and perceived health status. Consumer satisfaction refers to patients satisfaction with their experience with the health care system. Evaluated health status represents those aspects of an individual’s health that can be observed and measured such as mortality, organ dysfunction, or disability. Perceived health status is an individual’s own perception about his or her health and how it impacts on other aspects of life. Perceived health status is used synonymously by health services researchers as health related quality of life or simply quality of life (QOL.)