Joint chairs

Professor Peter Littlejohns and Professor Albert Weale

 

Social values international programme: integrating research and policy to ensure fair allocation of health care resources

HTAi Conference 2012 Panel Session

Panel

 Welcome and description of new research programme - Professor Peter Littlejohns

- 10 minutes

Questions and discussion - 5 minutes

 

Social Values and Normative Framework - Professor Albert Weale - 10 minutes

 Questions and discussion - 5 minutes

 

Description of web resource and case study approach - Dr Sarah Clark – 10 minutes

Questions and discussion - 5 minutes 

Case study from Thailand - Dr Sripen Tantivess – 10 minutes 

Questions and discussion - 5 minutes 

 

Case study from South Korea - Dr Jeonghoon Ahn - 10 minutes

Questions and discussion - 5 minutes 

 

Special Edition describing the background to the research programme available at

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=1477-7266&volume=26&issue=3

The Universal Health Challenge

People are living longer, have increasing expectations of what care should be provided, and health care innovation continues to offer ever greater options for intervention.

Policy makers face the challenge of setting health care priorities, balancing the objectives of securing high quality, comprehensive health care without creating financial barriers to access.

One way of dealing with these challenges is to search for greater 'value for money' in health care through evidence-based assessment of interventions that work and are cost-effective.

Yet, there is no reason to think that hard trade-offs and tragic choices can be fully overcome by greater efficiency in the use of resources. Priority-setting and the exclusions from health care coverage that it implies will be central features of health policy for years to come in all countries.

 A Balanced Approach.

Priority setting involves technical analyses of clinical and cost effectiveness, but it also requires judgements of social value. Such values include justice, solidarity and autonomy.

Even scientific criteria such as clinical and cost effectiveness presuppose social values in the assessment of the quality of life that an intervention will deliver.

Social values are also relevant to the policy processes by which priority-setting decisions are reached, since procedural values affect the perceived sense of legitimacy of decisions. Such procedural values include transparency, accountability and participation .

Value for money in health care means value for money in the light of relevant social values.

 But the big question remains

.

How is this done.............how should it be done ?

 A new research policy network  has been established

To provide a detailed mapping of the institutional patterns and decision making protocols of health care priority setting within a sample countries including the UK, the US, South Korea, Thailand .

To assess the role that social value considerations play in the policy paradigms of those countries.

To analyse and evaluate the role of social values in decision making using the tools of normative political theory.

To translate the research into the production of a decision tool intended to aid decision makers in identifying the role that social values should have in priority setting.