Impact of illness and death: comparison of Load and QALY models.

Background: When allocating resources health decision-makers make trade-offs between different outcomes, such as morbidity and mortality. The Load and QALY (quality-adjusted life year) models are two approaches that have been developed to help value health and care outcomes.

Methods: I briefly describe preference judgements, the Load and QALY models.

Results: The same preference judgement, based on the standard gamble, is applied to a single hypothetical individual's lifetime, who dies at age 75 after 3 years of illness. In this example, the morbidity/mortality ratio using the Load model is 50 times higher than using the QALY model.

Conclusions: These findings, placing greater value on illness, call for further exploration, and in particular, whether the Load model can reshape healthcare policies and resource allocation.