Letters
Basing resource allocation formulas on standardised mortality ratios would be wrong
BMJ 1998; 316 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.316.7138.1169 (Published 11 April 1998) Cite this as: BMJ 1998;316:1169
- Roy A Carr-Hill, Senior research fellow,
- James Q Jamison, Director
- Centre for Health Economics, York University, York YO1 5DD
- Health and Health Care Research Unit, Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast BT12 6B
EDITOR—Sheldon proposes that resource allocation formulas should revert to the methods proposed by the resource allocation working party over 20 years ago.1 He thinks that instead of messing around with complicated statistics we should use the standardised mortality ratio (although he does not specify which variant2). It is an appealing simplification, but it won't do for four reasons.
Firstly, because allocations are having to be made to much smaller populations, we need accurate and robust formulas and guidance on …
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