Re: st:measuring health care needs

[Joerg Luedicke <joerg.luedicke@gmail.com>]

This seems to be more like a theoretical question. What exactly do you
mean with "health needs"? If it is supposed to measure some kind of
demand for health care then the health care expenditures and/or doctor
and hospital visits etc. themselves are probably the best measures
already: people with higher needs for health care cost more money and
so, expenditures would be a direct measure for these "needs". (Just as
you would look at how many items of product x were sold if you were
interested in the demand for that product.) The 4 measures that you
mention are rather indirect measures for health care demand, and,
moreover, each is picking up quite different stuff. So I don't know
what your more general framework/project/theory and finally your
research question is but if you have health care expenditures and
doctor visits you already have a direct behavioral measure for health
care demand.

J.


On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 3:21 AM, Doris Kirigia
<dkirigia@kilifi.kemri-wellcome.org> wrote:
> Hello,
> I have a household health expenditure and utilisation survey data and would like to use 4 variables:
> mortality, self_assessed_hs (health status), illness_4wks and chronic_illness - independently to measure health needs. My question is, which is the best method in STATA to undertake such an analysis?
>
> The question I am trying to address is whether the distribution of health need would differ by the measure or put differently, would either of the variables explain health need better?
>
> Thank you,
> Doris
>
>
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