Fórum: Racionamento dos cuidados de saúde: Problemática inerente

• Autor(a) principal: Pinho, Micaela
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/11328/1931
• topic: Financial resources in health; Health priorities; Health systems; Health planning

Limited resources in the health sector force a process of choice between alternative health care programs and services and patients or groups of patients who will receive care. In the absence of a price mechanism, the priority-setting process serves to allocate scarce resources among competing uses, and is thus a form of rationing. Traditionally, implicit approaches have dominated the health sector’s decision-making, mostly by physicians. However, in the face of increasing budget constraints and rising patient expectations, more explicit and socially acceptable priority- setting practices are needed. Internationally, the development of explicit prioritization has proven difficult and controversial.