ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the results of a study which attempted to extend the limited area of current knowledge concerning the relative importance of medical care in the determination of outcome indexes. Rationale assumed that there is a meaningful real entity which can be seen in several normally distributed constituents, with health indexes as their proxy measures. These constituents can be seen as the results of random circumstances, the differential provision of medical care, and social, economic, and environmental factors. The environmental pollution variables were eliminated as a separate entity. The combined index, Multiple diagnoses, is used as a proxy measure of case complication rate, albeit a crude one, as the additional diagnoses may be concurrent conditions and not necessarily complications affecting the principal diagnosis. The only measures of morbidity that could be obtained from the routinely published statistics related only to the working populations and their days and spells of incapacity for work as certified by general practitioners.
