Societal preferences for distributive justice in the allocation of health care resources: A latent class discrete choice experiment

Skedgel, Chris ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4989-8846, Wailoo, Allan and Akehurst, Ron (2015) Societal preferences for distributive justice in the allocation of health care resources: A latent class discrete choice experiment. Medical Decision Making, 35 (1). pp. 94-105. ISSN 1552-681X

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Abstract

Economic theory suggests that resources should be allocated in a way that produces the greatest outputs, on the grounds that maximizing output allows for a redistribution that could benefit everyone. In health care, this is known as QALY (quality-adjusted life-year) maximization. This justification for QALY maximization may not hold, though, as it is difficult to reallocate health. Therefore, the allocation of health care should be seen as a matter of distributive justice as well as efficiency. A discrete choice experiment was undertaken to test consistency with the principles of QALY maximization and to quantify the willingness to trade life-year gains for distributive justice. An empirical ethics process was used to identify attributes that appeared relevant and ethically justified: patient age, severity (decomposed into initial quality and life expectancy), final health state, duration of benefit, and distributional concerns. Only 3% of respondents maximized QALYs with every choice, but scenarios with larger aggregate QALY gains were chosen more often and a majority of respondents maximized QALYs in a majority of their choices. However, respondents also appeared willing to prioritize smaller gains to preferred groups over larger gains to less preferred groups. Marginal analyses found a statistically significant preference for younger patients and a wider distribution of gains, as well as an aversion to patients with the shortest life expectancy or a poor final health state. These results support the existence of an equity-efficiency tradeoff and suggest that well-being could be enhanced by giving priority to programs that best satisfy societal preferences. Societal preferences could be incorporated through the use of explicit equity weights, although more research is required before such weights can be used in priority setting.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2014.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	cluster analysis,equity in distribution,psychometric methods,resource allocation,survey methods,sdg 3 - good health and well-being ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/good_health_and_well_being
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Health Economics Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Public Health and Health Services Research (former - to 2023)
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	21 Jan 2015 12:42
Last Modified:	19 Dec 2024 00:47
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/51918
DOI:	10.1177/0272989X14547915

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