EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The importance of age in allocating health care resources: does intervention‐type matter?

Mira Johri, Laura J. Damschroder, Brian J. Zikmund‐Fisher and Peter A. Ubel

Health Economics, 2005, vol. 14, issue 7, 669-678

Abstract: Background: Recent proposals to reform cost–effectiveness analysis (CEA) by weighting health benefits [(Quality‐adjusted life‐years) QALYs] by recipients' age are based on studies examining age‐related preferences in life‐saving contexts. We investigated whether the perceived importance of age in resource allocation decisions differs among intervention‐types. Methods: 160 individuals were recruited from a cafeteria of a university medical centre and asked to choose between hypothetical health care programmes. Scenario A described two programmes treating life‐threatening conditions and Scenario B two programmes providing palliative care. Programmes were identical except in average patient age (35 versus 65). Respondents also directly rated the importance of age for allocating resources for six types of interventions. Results: Responses for the life‐saving scenario favoured younger age groups while those for the palliative care scenario showed no age preference. The difference between scenarios was statistically significant. When directly rating the importance of age in allocating treatment resources, people placed greatest importance on age in treating infertility and life‐saving, and least importance in treating depression. Discussion: The importance people place on age as a resource allocation criterion depends on the clinical context. As QALYs serve as a common measure of health benefits for all intervention types, age weighting of QALYs is premature. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.958

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:14:y:2005:i:7:p:669-678

Access Statistics for this article

Health Economics is currently edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones

More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-20
Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:14:y:2005:i:7:p:669-678