Is the new iPhone worth it? Is it better to invest that money instead? Every day, cost-benefit analysis impacts consumers’ decisions. But what happens when that analysis is applied to life-saving treatment? In health care settings, determining appropriate courses of treatment for patients is required. Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) are an essential part of this decision. This term may be unfamiliar to most people, but it is a popular concept among health economists. In simple terms, a QALY is a way for hospitals to decide which life-saving treatments to use.

 

Health outcomes are evaluated using two factors: length of life and quality of life. These are also known as mortality and morbidity. QALYs are a way to quantify the benefits of a certain treatment. In other words, QALYs combine mortality and morbidity into a single score. 

 

Typically, these scores are one way to compare the effect of new technology to older technology on health outcomes. The technologies can be relatively evaluated by comparing how they affect QALYs, which gives scientists insight into how effective the different technologies may be for the same medical condition. QALYs also allow scientists to compare the treatment of one condition to a different treatment for a completely different condition. For example, scientists use this score to compare a new cancer treatment with the overall health impact of a new prescription drug for Parkinson’s disease. This unique ability allows scientists and medical professionals to better understand the risks and benefits of using a combination of treatments for patients. 

 

Finally, this system also helps determine the cost-effectiveness of medical technology. Medical technology can be scored by its cost for each year of quality life it provides. This determination enables medical professionals and scientists to decide if a medical technology is worth it, from a financial perspective. 

 

Calculating the QALY score requires a formula with multiple variables, including a key consideration of the Health-Related Quality of Life. This factor takes into account mobility, pain, self-care, anxiety/depression, and usual activities. By including information about how people’s daily lives are affected by diseases, this system is able to investigate the psychological effects of diseases. With this additional factor, QALYs look at the financial, physical, and psychological benefits of different diseases and technologies. This system attempts to simplify this complex assessment by providing a numerical score.

 

Although this calculation system is helpful to medical professionals, there are also a few drawbacks to QALYs. For example, QALYs have a difficult time giving accurate scores for chronic illnesses. Typically, this is because only quality of life is considered, not survival, when calculating the scores. Considering only quality of life limits how this system can be used for chronic illnesses. Another limitation with using QALYs is that they sometimes undervalue elderly people or people with a lower life expectancy. Sometimes, QALYs scores are biased against people with a lower life expectancy, which can lead to situations in which these people are given fewer opportunities for, or chances at, a quality life. Thus, professionals should recognize these drawbacks when evaluating the scores for patients in these categories. Despite these concerns, however, QALYs provide valuable information to help the medical industry. 

 

QALYs are a valuable tool that helps medical professionals and scientists compare medical technologies, the psychological side effects of different diseases and medical conditions, and the financial value of different medical technologies. QALYs determine the medical qualities of so many people’s lives and can even be used to decide who lives and who dies. 

 

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