Needs assessment: developing an economic approach.

Health authorities and health boards in the UK are required under the provisions of the NHS Act, 1990, to assess the needs of their resident populations for health care and, through contracting, to act as purchasers of services informed by those needs. This paper presents an economic approach to informing the purchaser on priority setting for contracting. For illustrative purposes, the technique is applied to services for elderly people with dementia. The paper demonstrates that an economic approach to needs assessment is both desirable and practicable.