The use of case mix measures in the planning and provision of health care.

Recent changes in the management of U.K. health care have been directed toward the provision of cost-effective care appropriate to the health needs of the population. There are many initiatives to achieve this objective. In particular, the National Casemix Office has developed health care resource groups to categorize clinical activity for costing purposes and health benefit groups to categorize the population in terms of need for health care and ability to benefit from that care. The article describes the use of these two sets of groupings to develop a matrix that maps the major health needs in the population against the treatment and care required to meet those needs. The matrix provides a framework for the development of outcome measures and clinical guidelines.