Individual health-related quality of life and the regional allocation of medical services: Insights from a stochastic health frontier analysis.

Abstract

Health care systems around the world face increasing budgetary pressures due to a growing number of cases and new and costly treatment options. Improving health-related quality of life while achieving cost-containment is the ultimate goal of an efficient provision of health care services. By means of a stochastic frontier analysis, we condition subjective individual healthrelated quality of life on individual characteristics, such as health-related behaviour and socioeconomic status and regional indicators, like the medical infrastructure and demographic and socioeconomic profiles. Our results indicate a positive relationship between general outpatient care and individual well-being. However, regional misallocation of medical services relates to inferior outcomes of regional health care service provision which are likely to negatively affect health-related quality of life at the individual level.