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The term
100,000*Ak/365/N+100,000*Bk /(3*365)/N is the
morbidity component in the Q-index. This component represents
the impact of the disease k on the population health. The impact is
measured in terms of the inpatient bed-days and outpatient visits to the
hospital. Both bed-days and outpatient visits are converted to the years of
potential life lost. The following is Miller’s comment pertaining to this
term:
"The need for considering morbidity in assigning program priorities is
generally accepted. There is a little agreement, nevertheless, on how much
weight to give to it or even on how to relate it to mortality so as to
reflect the combined impact of these two measures. … A few statistics are
available to the health administrator - for example, on hospitalization and
outpatient clinic visits. He can accept these data as a minimum, realizing
that this minimum does not necessarily represent the total picture, and use
them to arrive at an estimate of morbidity. Combining this estimate with
available measures of mortality, he can then derive a first approximation of
program priorities" (Miller,1970).
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