Public engagement in setting healthcare priorities: a ranking exercise in Cyprus

Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation - 2017
Antonis Farmakas1, Mamas Theodorou2, Petros Galanis3, Georgios Karayiannis4, Stefanos Ghobrial5, Nikos Polyzos6, Evridiki Papastavrou7, Eirini Agapidaki8, Kyriakos Souliotis9
1Department of Life and Health Sciences, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus
2Faculty of Economics and Management, Open University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus
3Research Associate Center for Health Services Management and Evaluation, Faculty of Nursing, University of Athens, Athens, Greece
4University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus
5School of Medicine, East Anglia University, Norwich, UK
6Department of Social Administration and Political Science, Democritus University of Thrace, Komotini, Greece
7Department of Nursing, Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus
8Centre for Health Services Research, Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Medical School, University of Athens, Athens, Greece
9Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Peloponnese, Corinth, Greece

Tóm tắt

In countries such as Cyprus the financial crisis and the recession have severely affected the funding and priority setting of the health care system. There is evidence highlighting the importance of population’ preferences in designing priorities for health care settings. Although public preferences have been thorough analysed in many countries, there is a research gap in terms of simultaneously investigating the relative importance and the weight of differing and competing criteria for determining healthcare priority settings. The main objective of the study was tο investigate public preferences for the relative utility and weight of differing and competing criteria for health care priority setting in Cyprus. The ‘conjoint analysis’ technique was applied to develop a ranking exercise. The aim of the study was to identify the preferences of the participants for alternative options. Participants were asked to grade in a priority order 16 hypothetical case scenarios of patients with different disease and of diverse socio-economic characteristics awaiting treatment. The sample was purposive and consisted of 100 Cypriots, selected from public locations all over the country. It was revealed that the “severity of the disease” and the “age of the patient” were the key prioritization criteria. Participants assigned the smallest relative value to the criterion “healthy lifestyle”. More precisely, participants older than 35 years old assigned higher relative importance to “age”, while younger participants to the “severity of the disease”. The “healthy lifestyle” criterion was assigned to the lowest relative importance to by all participants. In Cyprus, public participation in health care priority setting is almost inexistent. Nonetheless, it seems that the public’s participation in this process could lead to a wider acceptance of the healthcare system especially as a result of the financial crisis and the upcoming reforms implemented such as the establishment of the General System of Health Insurance.

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