Kaplan (1988a) has further applied the QWB to develop a General Health Policy Model. The aim of the Model is to express benefits and side effects of different health programs in terms of equivalents of completely well years of life. This entails the calculation of the expected duration of stay in each QWB levels over time, calculating the product and then adding them, to produce what Kaplan terms the Well Life expectancy, expressed in well years. The model is further described in Kaplan et al. (1989), and Kaplan and Anderson (1988).
Kaplan and Anderson (1988) note that standardised questionnaires are used to clarify individuals into each of the function scale steps, while individuals are classified into the CPX by the one symptom or problem that bothers them most. It is claimed that with structured questions an interviewer can obtain a classification on the QWB in 11 to 16 minutes.
The QWB has been used to evaluate outcomes in conditions such as AIDS, cystic fibrosis, and arthritis (see Kaplan et al., 1989).