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Health Services Knowledge: Use of Datasets Compiled Retrospectively to Correctly Represent Changes in Size of Wait List

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Health Services Evaluation

Part of the book series: Health Services Research ((HEALTHSR))

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Abstract

This chapter introduces two items which are mandatory for any dataset which hopes to support the analysis of waiting lists. It was once understood that the direction and extent of any change in size was determined by the balance of ‘enrolments’ and ‘admissions.’ We can assess the effect on the size of the list of any increase (or decrease) in the number of admissions, if we know the numbers on the list at two points in time (at the beginning, and at the end, of the period) and if we know the number enrolled on the list and the number admitted from it during the interval. In the chapter, we show that one cannot determine how changes in the number of admissions affect the size of the list, if the number of enrolments is not known or we do not know how it has changed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. London, UK

    Paul W. Armstrong

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  1. Paul W. Armstrong
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Correspondence to Paul W. Armstrong .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Community Health and Epidemiology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada

    Adrian Levy

  2. ICON plc, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Sarah Goring

  3. Department of Biostatistics, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Constantine Gatsonis

  4. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Boris Sobolev

  5. European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Department of Health Care Management, Berlin University of Technology, Berlin, Germany

    Ewout van Ginneken

  6. Department Health Care Management Faculty of Economics and Management, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Reinhard Busse

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Armstrong, P.W. (2019). Health Services Knowledge: Use of Datasets Compiled Retrospectively to Correctly Represent Changes in Size of Wait List. In: Levy, A., Goring, S., Gatsonis, C., Sobolev, B., van Ginneken, E., Busse, R. (eds) Health Services Evaluation. Health Services Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8715-3_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8715-3_16

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