OECD health-care systems confront the dual challenge of containing costs and maximising the health of their populations. The effectiveness of health-care provision in fostering longer and healthier lives is therefore of fundamental importance. In order to respond to these challenges, policy makers are demanding more and better information on health outcomes.

Therefore, this paper presents a summary of the current state-of-the-art in health outcome indicators for monitoring population health status and for evaluating the performance and effectiveness of various health policies and medical-care interventions. The paper begins by developing a framework for classifying the range of indicators that have been put forward to measure health outcomes. It then illustrates the potential value of different indicators for policy making within this framework and describes some recent trends in health status in OECD countries ...