Purpose – This editorial aims to outline the context of healthcare priority‐setting, and summarise each of the other ten papers in this special edition. It introduces a new multidisciplinary research programme drawing on ethics, philosophy, health economics, political science and health...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the social values framework developed by Clark and Weale could be applied to publicly available data and to explore the concordance between the framework values and those present in the statements of decision‐making protocols of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider some of the philosophical and bioethical issues raised by the creation of the draft social values framework developed to facilitate data collection and country‐specific presentations at the inaugural workshop on “Social values and health...

To describe the role of social values in priority setting related to health technology assessment processes and decision-making in Australia.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the organisational and procedural arrangements for priority setting in England and Wales. It describes the role of social values in the decision‐making process. Design/methodology/approach – The processes and content of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce the new US health organizations called accountable care organizations (ACOs) which are expected to improve the quality and reduce the cost of healthcare for Medicare enrolees. It assesses the importance of ACOs, defining and articulating the...