Sailing without radar: an excursion in resource allocation.
This paper deals with the knowledge base employed in resource allocation. It deliberately distinguishes between 'thick-textured' and 'thin-textured' knowledge. A thick-textured view of change in the health sector accounts for the history, civic goods and variety of human needs and passions which rationalist economics defines out as a thin-textured matter of individual choices in a free market. The narrative material begins with a discussion of health service policy-making in South Australia and elsewhere in the 1980s and 1990s, then proceeds to a discussion of priority-setting literature, which we regard as thin-textured. We offer two accounts of approaches to setting priorities in health care which we think have overcome some of the deficiencies of the thin-textured approach.
Alexander
K
K
Women's and Children's Hospital, North Adelaide, South Australia.
Hicks
N
N
D003256:Community Participation; D017144:Focus Groups; D015276:Health Care Rationing / Q000379:methods*; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006292:Health Priorities; D006740:Hospital Administrators; D006752:Hospital Planning; D006801:Humans; D011050:Policy Making; D011639:Public Opinion; D013021:South Australia