World health system performance revisited: the impact of varying the relative importance of health system goals

In 2002, the World Health Organization published a health system performance ranking for 191 member countries. The ranking was based on five indicators, with fixed weights common to all countries. We investigate the feasibility and desirability of using mathematical programming techniques that allow...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:BMC health services research 2004-07, Vol.4 (1), p.19-19, Article 19
Main Authors: Lauer, Jeremy A, Knox Lovell, C A, Murray, Christopher J L, Evans, David B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Benchmarking
Delivery of Health Care - economics
Delivery of Health Care - organization & administration
Delivery of Health Care - standards
Financing, Organized
Geography
Global Health
health care provision
Health Services Accessibility
Health Status Indicators
Humans
Models, Statistical
Organizational Objectives
Quality Indicators, Health Care
Quality of Health Care - classification
weighting of indicators
World Health Organization
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Summary:In 2002, the World Health Organization published a health system performance ranking for 191 member countries. The ranking was based on five indicators, with fixed weights common to all countries. We investigate the feasibility and desirability of using mathematical programming techniques that allow weights to vary across countries to reflect their varying circumstances and objectives. By global distributional measures, scores and ranks are found to be not very sensitive to changes in weights, although differences can be large for individual countries. Building the flexibility of variable weights into calculation of the performance index is a useful way to respond to the debates and criticisms appearing since publication of the ranking.
ISSN:1472-6963
1472-6963
DOI:10.1186/1472-6963-4-19