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PubMedDate not supplied

Impact of the perception of viability on resource allocation in the neonatal intensive care unit.

OBJECTIVE: To understand how neonatologists' perceptions of viability impact their willingness to recommend or provide medical interventions for infants born at 23 to 24 weeks' gestation. STUDY DESIGN: A 25-question survey mailed to 3056 neonatologists in the United States in 1992 yielded 1131 responses. Seven hundred seventy-five (775 of 1131, 69%) reported they believed that the lower limit of viability was 23 to 24 weeks' gestation. These respondents were asked if they were willing to recommend or provide a series of medical interventions for infants born at 23 and 24 weeks' gestation. RESULTS: Most respondents would provide ventilation (82% and 95%) and surfactant (62% and 78%) for infants born at 23 and 24 weeks' gestation, respectively. The respondent's prediction of <100% mortality, infant factors, and parental wishes were significant predictors of willingness to resuscitate infants born at 23 weeks' gestation. CONCLUSION: There is considerable variation among neonatologists in their willingness to recommend or provide medical interventions for infants born at 23 to 24 weeks' gestation.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed2003

Integer/linear mathematical programming models: a tool for allocating healthcare resources.

In today's environment, the demand for efficient healthcare resource allocation is increasing. As new technologies become available, allocation decisions become more complex and tools to assist decision makers in determining efficient allocations of healthcare resources are encouraged. Mathematical programs have multiple properties that are desirable for healthcare decision makers such as the simultaneous consideration of multiple constraints and a built-in sensitivity analysis. These models have been well researched and are considered invaluable in other industries. Mathematical programming has also become increasingly visible in facilitating the allocation of healthcare resources in the health services research sector. However, the use of mathematical programming tools has been limited in economic evaluations of new technologies. Budget allocations, such as formulary, drug development, and pricing decisions may benefit greatly from the use of mathematical programs. As an increasing number of expensive new technologies become available and pressure grows to contain healthcare costs, these tools may help guide a more efficient allocation of resources for technologies under budgetary and other constraints.

Decision Making↗
PubMed1991

Allocating health resources ethically: new roles for administrators and clinicians.

Rationing of health care is an inevitable correlate of living in a world of finite resources. It is morally necessary. The Hippocratic ethic commits clinicians to do whatever will benefit the patient and therefore must be abandoned in a world of moral rationing. After looking at some unacceptable preliminary strategies, two patient-centered adjustments in the Hippocratic ethic, adopting a more objective standard of patient benefit and adding a principle of patient autonomy, are defended. Still, however, cutting the fat out of the system will not be sufficient. A true social ethic of resource allocation will be necessary. A social contract approach supports a principle of equity as a necessary supplement to utility and cost-benefit analysis. It does not follow, however, that clinicians must take on these social ethical decisions. Clinicians should be exempt from normal social ethics so they are free to pursue the objective welfare of patients (provided they consent to such benefit). Administrators are in no better position to allocate scarce resources. What is needed is input from patients to (a) set categorical limits on their own care, (b) articulate principles for fine-tuning the allocation decisions, and (c) supervise professional agents who will make specific gatekeeping decisions for allocating a pool of resources legitimately thought to belong to the patient population. Neither administrators nor clinicians will be responsible for rationing decisions. In 1989 we spent $604.1 billion on health (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 1990). That is almost $2 billion a day. Sometimes the benefits are dramatic: the pneumonia cured, the heart transplanted, the children spared from infectious diseases with immunizations that cost only pennies. Even so, the American health care system leaves much to be desired. Many other countries have higher life expectancy at birth. Infant mortality in the United States is far higher than countries like Japan and Sweden (United Nations Children's Fund 1990). If we look at the distribution of health status in the United States, the problems look even worse. Today, depending on the study, about 13 to 15 percent of the population has no health insurance at all (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1989; Short, Monheit, and Beauregard 1989). Another 13 percent is woefully underinsured (Farley 1985). Social variables such as income, education, and race reveal dramatically different health status (Short, Monheit, and Beauregard 1989; Farley 1985). To respond to these needs, rationing will be essential.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Cost Control↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Allocation of resources--to treat or not to treat, and who shall beg the question?

Two separate clusters of events in recent months have spurred public discussions over the questions of how and to what degree the public should be involved in resource allocation decisions. In England, a group of physicians unilaterally decided to deny bypass surgery to heavy smokers, and in the United States, uninsured parents of conjoined twins elected to seek separation of the twins despite heavy odds against their survival, raising questions of whether health care reform will stymie such decisions in the future.

Coronary Artery Bypass↗
PubMed1987

Reviewing RAWP. Variations in admission rates: implications for equitable allocation of resources.

The review of the Resource Allocation Working Party (RAWP) formula by the National Health Service Management Board has considered the method used to account for cross boundary flows between health authorities. There is no consensus on how this should be done subregionally, as it raises the unresolved problem of the best method of estimating the size of catchment populations. Different methods produce different population sizes when the admission rates of individuals living in different districts vary. The National Health Service/Department of Health and Social Security acute services working group on performance indicators recently considered the assumptions made by different methods in terms of admission thresholds set by hospital clinicians. More complicated methods of assessing catchment areas seem to offer little advantage over the simplest method, but none of the methods answer the underlying questions of what truly determines admission rates and whether higher admission rates are better than lower ones. Empirical research into variations in admission rates and their relation to outcomes is important for determining the fair allocation of resources in future.

Catchment Area, Health↗
PubMed2000

Developmental trade-offs and life histories: strategic allocation of resources in caddis flies.

Resource allocation trade-offs during development are potentially very important in the evolution of organism morphology and life-history strategy However, they have rarely been demonstrated empirically. To what extent the division of limited resources between growing organs is a consequence of particular developmental pathways or varies strategically in line with life-history predictions is unknown. It has been demonstrated in a number of holometabolous insects that altering the resources available at pupation changes the pattern of allocation to adult tissues, but this has not been examined in a life-history context. Using caddis flies (Trichoptera), we show here that the effect of depleted larval resources on the pattern of somatic and reproductive investment is not fixed but varies between species with different life-history patterns. In particular, we demonstrate that, in a long-lived species, thorax size is preserved, which contrasts with the pattern previously observed in a short-lived species. That the adult body can be differentially altered by the same resource depletion in the larvae demonstrates that the allocation of resources amongst body parts is not a consequence of fixed pathways during development. Rather, the allocation of resources during development can occur in a manner consistent with the minimization of the effects on adult fitness.

Animals↗
PubMed2005

The importance of age in allocating health care resources: does intervention-type matter?

BACKGROUND: Recent proposals to reform cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) by weighting health benefits [(Quality-adjusted life-years) QALYs] by recipients' age are based on studies examining age-related preferences in life-saving contexts. We investigated whether the perceived importance of age in resource allocation decisions differs among intervention-types. METHODS: 160 individuals were recruited from a cafeteria of a university medical centre and asked to choose between hypothetical health care programmes. Scenario A described two programmes treating life-threatening conditions and Scenario B two programmes providing palliative care. Programmes were identical except in average patient age (35 versus 65). Respondents also directly rated the importance of age for allocating resources for six types of interventions. RESULTS: Responses for the life-saving scenario favoured younger age groups while those for the palliative care scenario showed no age preference. The difference between scenarios was statistically significant. When directly rating the importance of age in allocating treatment resources, people placed greatest importance on age in treating infertility and life-saving, and least importance in treating depression. DISCUSSION: The importance people place on age as a resource allocation criterion depends on the clinical context. As QALYs serve as a common measure of health benefits for all intervention types, age weighting of QALYs is premature.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

[Methods of comparative economic evaluations of therapies and for rational allocation of resources across sectors of health care systems - introduction, advantages, risks].

Because of scarcity of resources, diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in medicine increasingly have to be examined not only with regard to effectiveness but also with regard to cost-effectiveness, which means with regard to the relation between resources used and resulting outcome (however this outcome is measured). Primarily, this is true for treatment methods for one and the same medical condition. However, economists also consider to evaluate medical interventions across heterogeneous medical conditions, in order to rank them with regard to their cost-effectiveness. Using quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) as outcome variable, all medical interventions examined can be ranked in QALY-League-Tables, which could serve as a basis for resource allocation decisions by health policy makers or other payers. However, there are methodological as well as ethical objections with such an approach.

Cost-Benefit Analysis↗
PubMed1990

Comparing trainer and trainee referral rates: implications for education and allocation of resources.

Referral rates and urgency of referral to hospital by six pairs of trainers and trainees were compared over one month in 1986. From 5846 consultations, 327 resulted in referral to hospital. Overall, the referral rates was low at 5.6 per 100 consultations; however, there was considerable variation in individual referral rates with trainees tending to follow their trainer's referral patterns, despite statistical adjustment for sharing the same practice. This paper critically examines the wisdom of using general practitioner referral rates for the purpose of resource allocation and education.

Ambulatory Care↗
PubMed1998

"Communitarian claims" as an ethical basis for allocating health care resources.

This paper presents the case for re-examining the most commonly adopted basis of resource allocation in health care, i.e. need. The key problems identified with most needs approaches are (a) defining its precise meaning, (b) that the community is seldom consulted as to first what constitute needs for health care or second what relative weights are to be attached to health gains aimed at addressing different needs and (c) more generally, proceeding without knowing what the community wants the objectives of health care to be. It is suggested that John Broome's notion of "claims", especially what this paper calls "communitarian claims", may be helpful in providing a better basis for allocating health care resources. Such "communitarian claims" allow inter alia for the community to be involved in setting the social choice rules with respect to the governance of health care and for determining what it is that it (the community) wants from its health service. The links to rights are also identified and the advantages of communitarian claims over both a simple concept of need and rights are set out, without arguing that either needs (or rights) ought necessarily to be abandoned as bases for resource allocation in health care.

Australia↗