A Non-Parametric Health Status Index - a Study of Hormone Replacement Therapy in Sweden

A relatively new approach to measure health status is to use non-parametric frontier methods, based on index and production theory. The purpose of this study is to construct and investigate some properties of a non-parametric health status index. The index is based on a non-radial efficiency measure obtained from a non- parametric health characteristics frontier model. The paper includes an empirical application where the health status index is applied to swedish data from a menopause clinic. The data is collected using the health status profile part of the EuroQol questionnaire. Quality weights are obtained using the time trade- off and visual analogue scale approaches. Correlations between the health status index and quality weights are analysed. The results show that the health status index is significantly correlated both with the rating scale and the time trade-off scores.