February 27, 2004
Priority Setting Toolkit: A Guide to the Use of Economics in Health Care Decision Making
Authors: Craig Mitton, Cam Donaldson
ISBN: 0-7279-1736-6
Publisher: BMJ Books
Priority setting is a skill required of anyone in health care management today. This book reviews the different methodologies and comes down firmly in favour of an economics-based approach, namely programme budgeting and marginal analysis (PBMA). Based on their wealth of international experience and unique collaborative research programme, the authors show how PBMA can be used as a vehicle for taking account of the complexities of health care whilst still basing decisions on sound economic concepts. Thus, it is demonstrated that PBMA is not only about economics but also the all important issues of patient and public benefit.
Priority Setting Toolkit is published by BMJ Books (price £19.95). It can ordered from http://www.bmjbookshop.com
ISBN 0-7279-1736-6
Priority Setting Toolkit provides the academic background as well as the tools for implementation. With its illustrative case histories, this is a unique source of information on this important aspect of getting health economics used in the everyday, but fundamental, practice of managing scarcity. It will help clinicians and managers planning for optimum health care delivery within a fixed budget, as well as health economics students and academics who wish to learn more about helping people manage their resources to improve population health.
With chapters on:
- The basic economic concepts
- Alternative approaches to priority setting
- Review of the PBMA literature
- Putting PBMA into practice
- The challenges of data and time
- The challenge of the programme budget
- The challenge of disinvesting
- The challenge of measuring and valuing benefits
- The challenge of involving the public
- The challenge of the organisation