BACKGROUND The Short Form 36 Health Survey Questionnaire (SF-36) is used to indicate the health status of particular populations, to help with service planning and to measure the impact of clinical and social interventions. Culture-specific data are required to calculate SF-36 norm-based scores. Currently, in the UK normative sources are nearly two decades old, Anglocentric and lack data on the...

The Short Form-36 (SF-36) health questionnaire has been put forward as a general measure of outcome in health care and has been evaluated in several recent studies in the UK. We report its use in three groups of patients after spinal operations and have compared it with the Oswestry and Low Back Pain disability scales. There was a significant correlation between all variables of the SF-36 and t...

Amenities such as good food, attentive staff, and pleasant surroundings may play an important role in hospital demand. We use a marketing survey to measure amenities at hospitals in greater Los Angeles and analyze the choice behavior of Medicare pneumonia patients in this market. We find that the mean valuation of amenities is positive and substantial. From the patient perspective, hospital qua...