Population norms for quality adjusted life years for the United States of America, China, the United Kingdom and Australia

Abstract

Health economics uses quality adjusted life years (QALYs) to help healthcare decision makers. However, unlike life expectancy for which age- and sex-dependent national life tables are available, no general population norms exist to use as a benchmark against which to compare observed or modeled projections of QALYs in sub-populations or patients. We developed a 2-state Markov model to generate QALY population norms for the USA, UK, China and Australia. Annual age- and sex-specific probabilities of all-cause mortality were taken from life tables combined with general population country-specific age- and sex-specific health state utilities for the EQ-5D-3L (all countries); and SF-6D (Australia..