Techniques to manage scarce healthcare resources continue to evolve in response to changing, growing and competing demands. Yet there is no standard definition in the priority setting literature of what might constitute the desired impact or success of resource management activities.

Spurred by a desire to improve quality of care and to understand the relative value of medical treatments, there has been a recent surge of interest in publicly funded comparative effectiveness research (CER) in the US. As health technology assessment (HTA) shares some of the same goals as CER,...

Priority setting research in health economics has traditionally employed quantitative methodologies and been informed by post-positivist philosophical assumptions about the world and the nature of knowledge. These approaches have been rewarded with well-developed and validated tools. However, it...

Drug coverage decisions require information about clinically relevant benefits and risks, as well as economic information about direct and indirect costs, in comparison with relevant treatment alternatives. A recent Canadian initiative aims to improve the evidentiary basis for drug coverage...

Background: Decision makers within the Calgary Health Region adopted and applied programme budgeting and marginal analysis (PBMA) for priority-setting activity across major service portfolios within the Region. Methods: Seventeen in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with senior...

As resources in health care are scarce, health authorities and other health organizations are charged with determining how best to spend limited resources. While a number of formal approaches to priority setting within health authorities have been used internationally, there has been limited...

This comprehensive collection brings together more than 50 contributions from some of the most influential researchers in health economics. It authoritatively covers theoretical and empirical issues in health economics, with a balanced range of material on equity and efficiency in health care...

Decision-makers are challenged to incorporate public input into priority-setting decisions. We conducted a pan-Canadian survey of decision-makers in cancer control to investigate the types of evidence, especially evidence supplied by the public, that are utilized in health care priority-setting....