%0 Journal Article
%T From clinical performance to program performance
%A Helmut WENZEL
%A Kurt NEESER
%J Management in Health
%D 2010
%I National Scool of Public Health Management and Professional Development, Bucharest
%X Diagnostic test results mark the beginning of a "production process of health". Diagnostic procedures use health care resources, may have adverse effects, and can provide wrong results. Erroneous classifications may lead to unnecessary and possibly harmful treatment or even prevent or delay access to the right treatment. Therefore diagnostics are suitable subjects for economic evaluations. Various approaches for economic assessments with different levels of complexity have been presented in the past. High complexity and high level evaluations require comparatively considerable investments in time and budgets. Moreover, those complex approaches unfold their highest advantage in ex post evaluations, i.e. in summative product evaluations. Planning and budgeting a so called "production process of health" necessitates valid information on the performance of test and its likely intermediate outcomes in terms of correct classification of diseases and non-diseased population in specific situations. The clinical performance has to be adjusted by incorporating the peculiarities of an application, especially the influence of various prevalence rates at various locations of the disease under survey. This information has its highest value in the planning process, i.e. ex ante. This precondition of having valid information at hand at a very early point in time could be met by a less complex and less expensive approach that actually is based on five parameters, only.
%K Diagnostic test
%K clinical performance
%K utility
%K economic evaluation
%U http://journal.managementinhealth.com/index.php/rms/article/view/156/422