Health Services Research – What it is, How to Do it, and Why it Matters

Abstract

The term 'Health Services Research' (HSR) has achieved only recent currency in the UK. The purpose of this short article is to explain what it is, to say how it differs from clinical research even when using similar methods, and to argue that it is likely to become of rapidly increasing importance to health policy-makers and managers.

Health services research: what is it and what does it offer?

“…The potential of health services research to make further useful contributions to health‐care reform will continue to grow 83 . Areas of need are: (i) health technology assessment (especially new and rapidly evolving technologies), (ii) service delivery and organization (with greater attention to organizational psychology, clinical sociology and the impact of clinical informatics), (iii) evaluation and enhancement of clinical performance and (iv) resource allocation.…”

Comparative and cross-cultural health research.

“…Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered to be the gold standard methodology for assessing the effectiveness of behavioural interventions due to their ability equally to distribute confounding factors between control and intervention groups (Sackett et al 1997). However, it is acknowledged that RCTs are more susceptible to bias in the assessment of behavioural compared to clinical interventions (Lilford & Harrison. 1994;Effective Health Care 1994).…”