A measure of the quality or effectiveness of health education in which the standard of judgment is the attainment of a specified end result.
A measure of the quality of medical care in which the standard of judgment is the attainment of a specified end result, or outcome. The outcome of medical care is measured with such parameters as improved health, lowered mortality and morbidity, and improvement in abnormal states (such as elevated blood pressure). Any disease has a “natural history” which medical care seeks to alter. To measure the effectiveness of a particular medical action in altering a disease’s natural history is to carry out an outcome measure. Such measures are the only valid way to measure the effectiveness of medical care, and some say they are the only way to measure the quality of medical care. To carry out cost-benefit analyses of medical care such measures are necessary. However, they are difficult to devise, and have not often been done in comparing medical settings. It is possible to carry out a random controlled trial using outcome measures to compare the therapeutic effect of any drug or medical procedure on a disease to its ”natural history” without treatment, or with a treatment already in use. Some argue that this should be done before any new medical procedure is put into use.