A health state score combines multiple domains of data into a single metric anchored at 0 (as bad as dead) and 1 (perfect or ideal health). It is an important tool for prioritizing health care interventions in cost-utility analysis.
As the nation’s hospitals grappled with millions of COVID-19-related hospitalizations during 2020, health state scores revealed a number of challenges across each state. For example, some states struggled with maintaining access to ICU beds. State Scorecard data shows that during the pandemic, more days were spent at high ICU capacity than expected, which could indicate a lack of adequate bed space to accommodate COVID-19 patients as well as a lack of availability for other patients with severe conditions.
Using a preference-based measure to compare health states is an important step in developing strategies to improve patient experience and outcomes, but assessing individual preferences for different health-related quality of life measures is challenging. The goal is to provide a clear, interpretable result that can be used in clinical encounters.
Using a self-completion questionnaire, the EQ-5D asks people to translate their prevailing description of their personal well-being, represented by the extent of their problems in five dimensions, into a unidimensional value of health that they personally assign to it. The resulting utilities, called health state utility values (HUs), are used in cost-utility analyses to value the benefits and costs of alternative health care treatments. health state score