Abstract Background During the arrival of COVID-19 pandemic, various professional ethical guidance was issued to (and for) health and social care professionals in England Wales. Guidance can help inform support such their patients, clients service users, but a plethora risked information overload, confusion, inconsistency. Methods early months we undertook rapid review, asking: what are princip...

Objectives: For rare diseases it may be difficult to generate data from randomized trials to support funding of a drug. Enzyme replacement therapies for diseases of inherited metabolic enzyme deficiency provide an example of this dilemma. The Ontario Public Drug Programs convened the Drugs for Rare Diseases Working Group to develop a policy for assessing these drugs. Methods: The Drugs for Rare...

OBJECTIVE Limited resources mean that decision-makers must set priorities among competing opportunities. Programme budgeting and marginal analysis (PBMA) is an economic approach that focuses on optimizing benefits with available resources. Accountability for reasonableness (A4R) is an ethics approach that focuses on ensuring fair priority-setting processes. PBMA and A4R have been used separatel...

OBJECTIVES To analyze the prioritization process for chemotherapy drugs in the Drug-Therapeutic Committees (DTCs) in Catalan hospitals and assess their impact on patients' access to these drugs. METHODS A case qualitative study of the DTCs of tertiary hospitals in Catalonia was performed, based on semi-structured interviews and a review of the scientific literature. Key professionals were int...

Ten years ago, Holm's highly influential paper "Goodbye to the simple solutions: the second phase of priority setting" was published [Holm S. Goodbye to the simple solutions: the second phase of priority setting in health care. British Medical Journal 1998;317:1000-7]. Whilst attending the 2nd International Conference on Priorities in Health Care in London, Holm argued that the search for a rat...