The appropriate criteria that should be used in setting priorities in a publicly funded health care system remain open to debate. From a health economics perspective, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) are increasingly portrayed as a measure of societal value and the criterion of QALY...

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Resource scarcity is the raison d'être for the discipline of economics. Thus, the primary purpose of economic analysis is to help decision-makers when addressing problems arising due to the scarcity problem. The research reported here was concerned with how cost-effectiveness information is...

The application of conjoint measurement to the field of health economics is relatively new, although there is growing interest and there have been a number of studies undertaken recently. Wider acceptance of the technique requires methodological issues concerning both reliability and validity to...

This paper is concerned with the structural reliability of conjoint measurement when applied in a health care setting. The clinical context was the diagnosis and treatment of knee injuries. A conjoint measurement study was conducted which used the pairwise choice approach to preference...

In a context of rapid technological advances in health care and increasing demand for expensive treatments, local formulary committees are key players in the management of scarce resources. However, little is known about the information and processes used when making decisions on the inclusion...

Patient choice is at the heart of health-care reform programmes in the UK and in many other countries. The success of patient choice initiatives is dependent on a well-functioning agency relationship in health care. We interviewed 197 patients from 13 general practices in the West Midlands, UK,...