Prioritisation of patients on waiting lists: a community workshop approach

The management of health care systems is facing the problem of long waiting lists in many of the services offered. The use of waiting time as a device for rationing the allocation of medical care does not seem to be a fair and just criterion. The main aim of this paper is the development of a weighting system, based on the patient’s differential characteristics, for prioritising access to the polysomnograph test for sufferers of apnea. To this end, a single Choice Experiment (CE) was applied to a representative sample of the population of Zaragoza (Spain) and a combined approach of CE and Citizens’ Juries (CJ) to a group of selected participants. Although CE and CJ have been widely applied to different health economics issues, the joint model proposed for the development of a weighting system is, to the best of our knowledge, new and original. The results of our work suggest an enhanced model which responds to many of the criticisms raised in the relevant literature.