Economic decisions on who to treat when resources are not enough for everyone: evidence from a Spanish survey

• Autor(a) principal: Pinho, Micaela
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Borges, Ana Pinto
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/11328/2667; https://doi.org/10.15446/rsap.v20n5.69558
• topic: Healthcare rationing; Economics; Ethics; Social values; Public opinion; Prestación de atención de salud; Asignación de recursos para la atención de salud; Economía; Ética; Valores sociales; Opinión pública

Objective To analyze the attitudes of Spanish citizens towards the criteria that should be used as a guide to make decisions regarding the prioritization of patients, namely, medical, economic and person-based criteria. Methods An online self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of 546 Spanish respondents. The questionnaire was made up of three questions. In the first two questions respondents faced a hypothetical rationing dilemma involving four patients (differentiated by personal characteristics and health conditions) where they were asked to: (i) choose only one patient to be treated and (ii) rank the patients’ assistance priority order. As for the third question, respondents were asked to state their level of agreement with 14 healthcare rationing criteria through a five-point Likert scale. Descriptive statistics, factor analysis and multinomial regressions were used. Results Findings suggest that Spanish respondents support a plurality of views on the rationing principles on which healthcare microallocation decisions should be based. Despite the fact respondents support the idea that all patients should receive healthcare assistance equally, they also consider the age of the patient, as well as economic factors when establishing assistance priories among patients. Conclusions If it is not possible to provide health care assistance and treatments to all people, then age and economic factors should guide healthcare priority setting.