The Healthcare Department

Hello World. We're Back! Welcome to The Healthcare Department. So much has happened and is happening. There is much going on in health around the world so we should not lack for material. The plan is to focus on the use of heath economics in policy making but we may stray into general public health and preventive medicine occasionally.

The name The Healthcare Department has been chosen because it can remind us that much of healthcare provision that can claim to be accessible, equitable, of quality is provided by the state. By way of making it clear what we are about, what comes next can serve as the foundation for The apostles’creed of this blog:

I believe that health results from a combination of inputs of which healthcare is just one. [The others include: genetics, environment, behaviour, education, wealth, social capital and health care (both preventative and curative).]

I believe that there are finite amounts of resources available for use in healthcare. [At the same time there appear to be increasing demands on the resources for healthcare provision. As a result choices (sometimes difficult ones) have to be made about what healthcare will or should be provided and that these choices are best made after considering the evidence for effectiveness and cost effectiveness of the interventions being considered.]

I also believe that it is also useful to challenge ourselves and those in decision making situations to find innovative ways to maintain and improve the level of health.

I believe that it is useful to have persons and/or agencies that operating at arms length who are charged with the responsiblity of advising on the use of resources for health.

[Agencies like The National Institute for Clinical Excellence seek to espouse principles of transparencey, consistency, involvement and fairness in health care decision making. The agencies will likely face challenges in terms of the acceptablity of explicit rationing, the timeliness of the guidance provided, and ensuring that the guidance is implementable and implemented. ]

And because economic evaluation seeks to improve decision making about the allocation of resources it potentially has much to offer healthcare decision making. [Of course health economists will tend to believe that economic evaluation is underused in decision making while policy makers may believe the opposite. ]

Here endeth the Healthcare Apostles Creed.

We look forward to hearing what readers think about the topics and the analysis in this blog. I welcome both your commendations and criticisms. If you wish you can start by helping withthe creed. Is it true, useful, complete? Let us know. Happy reading and again welcome to The Healthcare Department blog.

posted by Arthur @ 7:04 AM 1 comments