The elusive challenge of priority setting in health and health care

Global Developments in Priority Setting in Health

Countries around the world are experiencing an ever-increasing need to make choices in investments in health and healthcare. This makes it incumbent upon them to have formal processes in place to optimize the legitimacy of eventual decisions. There is now growing experience among countries of the implementation of stakeholder participation, and a developing convergence of methods to support dec...

Aversion to health inequalities and priority setting in health care.

Traditionally aversion to health inequality is modelled through a concave utility function over health outcomes. Bleichrodt et al. [Bleichrodt, H., Diecidue E., Quiggin J., 2004. Equity weights in the allocation of health care: the rank-dependent QALY model. Journal of Health Economics 23, 157-171] have suggested a "dual" approach based on the introduction of explicit equity weights. The purpos...

Characterising Needs in Health Care Priority Setting

Priorities and priority-setting in health care in the Netherlands.

Since 1990, the priority-setting has become one of the key issues in making choices in health care. In 1991, the now famous Dunning Report was presented to the Dutch Cabinet. One of its main conclusions was that health services should satisfy four criteria: necessary care, effectiveness, efficiency, and individual responsibility. Priority-setting can be done either by excluding medical treatmen...

Priority setting in health care: Attitudes of physicians and patients

Background: The opinion of physicians clearly counts in prioritizing health care, but there is little information on the rationales underlying treatment decisions and whether these rationales are accepted by patients. Objective: To compare physicians and patients regarding their understanding and use of therapeutic benefit and treatment costs as criteria for prioritizing health care. Methods: S...