Condition specific and patient specific measures are of limited use when allocating resources

Despite widespread agreement on the need to consider quality of life in health care decisions, there is little agreement over which of a growing list of measures of quality of life should be used.There is no agreement over broad issues such as whose values should be incorporated in the measures and how different values should be weighted.

Literally hundreds of condition specific and patient specific measures have been developed. Condition specific measures are popular in part because they offer the scope to capture the many different aspects of health that might influence quality of life. When compared with generic measures, which can be applied to all conditions, …