Institution

OECD

Year

2011

Level

Intermediate to advanced

Abstract

This chapter provides a methodological discussion and several illustrative examples of the developmental work related to health care prices and volumes. It outlines some of the difficulties in the calculations of the constant-price output of health care industries both for market and non-market production, and discusses methodological problems of international price comparisons. This chapter skips the more technical parts of index numbers and focuses on proposals to improve the measurement of price and volume changes in health. The chapter presents an overview of the methods tested in several countries that have carried out projects to improve their countries’ price and output measurement in health care, mainly using directly-measured output indicators.