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Making music out of noise – the cost function approach to evaluation∗

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2018

Martin Knapp
Martin Knapp*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, London
*
Correspondence: M. Knapp, PSSRU, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE
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Extract

In good health care systems, the planning and purchasing of services for individual people should be based on individual needs assessments and outcome expectations. No two patients or users of a given service or programme are likely to present exactly the same symptoms or needs, or to experience exactly the same outcomes. They will have different personal and family circumstances, resources and preferences. Consequently, service responses should rarely be exactly identical.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 173 , Issue S36: Economics of schizophrenia , September 1998 , pp. 7 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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Footnotes

∗

This paper is based loosely on presentations attheThird Workshop on ‘Costs and assessment in psychiatry’, Venice, October 1994, and a conference on the ‘Scientific basis of health services’, London, October 1995.

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