Resource Allocation and Priority Setting

Resource Allocation and Priority
Setting
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Table of Contents
a) Should Australia or your home country introduce an independent agency to undertake
priority-setting in health care? Explain your reasoning...................................................................3
b) If an independent priority-setting agency were to be introduced, should it ask the community
what ethical values/principles should guide resource allocation and priority-setting in health
care?.................................................................................................................................................4
c) What values/principles should underlie priority-setting in the country you have chosen?......5
d) Considering the key issues in priority-setting, as well as the contributions of economic
theory and empirical evidence, how should this new agency carry out its task?............................7
References......................................................................................................................................11
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a) Should Australia or your home country introduce an
independent agency to undertake priority-setting in
health care? Explain your reasoning
Priority-setting in healthcare is a term used for deciding the strategy and process related to the
manner in which interventions related to health are carried out. The priority-setting can be
conducted at different levels such as the – research level, disease level or any other form of level
(Smith, et al., 2016). One of the major challenges that is faced by the Healthcare systems
include the challenge of managing the resources that are limited and it is not possible for the
healthcare organizations to effectively provide the interventions to everyone present in the
population (Sabik & Lie, 2010). The priority-setting in Australia indicates that the Australian
Health care system is a failure in the context of setting the priorities that are informed, rational
and comprehensive in nature (Gavinm, 2016). It is recommended that Australia should introduce
an independent agency for the purpose of priority-setting. Wong et.al (2018) in their study also
recommended the use a joint independent agency for setting a priority process that is transparent,
sustainable and participatory at the same time. An independent agency if introduced for priority-
setting in the Australian Healthcare sector will help in effective decision making regarding the
service coverage decisions and policy guidance (Wong et al., 2018). The report by World Health
Organization also advocates the use of a private agency for the purpose of priority-setting. The
authors provided an example of Philippines that utilizes Philippine Health Insurance Corporation
(PHIC), an agency for National Health Insurance for providing the social health insurance
coverage to people of the nations. This particular effort of Philippines healthcare system helped
in ensuring that the people of nation do get the quality and affordable health services that will
help it in achieving a financial sustainability (World Health Organization, 2010). The
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independent agencies will also help the activities such as healthcare data collection that can be
further used for developing new healthcare policies and strategies for people that are both are
high quality and affordable too. The private agencies in Australia can be utilized in coordinating
the safety investigations and major inquiries in National Health Service. Macrae & Vincent
(2014) in their study supports the same idea (Macrae & Vincent, 2014). In Australia, Primary
health networks (PHNs) are already working in the healthcare sector. PHN’s are the government
funded independent organizations that are focused towards improving the effectiveness and
efficiency of country’s health services by specifically helping the disadvantaged group of people
along with coordinating the medical care across the healthcare system (Healthdirect, 2018). It is
recommended that the independent organizations can be steered by a working committee that can
monitor and control such independent agencies. Monitoring and control of priority setting
process is essential so as to ensure that the process is moving towards the right direction along
with making necessary changes in the policies and strategies of priority setting. The above
discussion has focused on the studies that have advocated the use of independent agencies for the
priority setting. The finding of such researches may assist Australia in deciding policies and
strategies of priority setting.
b) If an independent priority-setting agency were to be
introduced, should it ask the community what ethical
values/principles should guide resource allocation and
priority-setting in health care?
The independent priority-settings if introduced should ask the community about the ethical
values and principles that will guide the process of resource allocation along with setting the
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