Procedural justice in public health care resource allocation.
BACKGROUND
The legal studies literature on procedural justice identifies six key characteristics of procedural justice: accuracy, consistency, impartiality, reversibility, transparency and voice. However, the relative importance of these in the context of public health care resource allocation is unclear, as is whether they are valuable instrumentally (because it contributes to better outcomes) or inherently (for its own sake).


METHODS
A survey of 80-odd members of the UK public determined the following: the ranking of all the six characteristics; the pairwise comparisons of the characteristics; and whether each characteristic was important for instrumental reasons, for intrinsic reasons or for both.


RESULTS
Respondents ranked the procedures in the order of accuracy, consistency, impartiality, reversibility and transparency. Procedural justice was valued for both instrumental and inherent reasons.


CONCLUSIONS
A robust ranking of five of the six procedural characteristics was found. The ranking for voice was sensitive to the question format, which has methodological implications. Around a quarter to a third of respondents regarded a procedural characteristic to have entirely intrinsic value.
Tsuchiya
Aki
A
School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. a.tsuchiya@sheffield.ac.uk
Miguel
Luis Silva
LS
Edlin
Richard
R
Wailoo
Allan
A
Dolan
Paul
P
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D015276:Health Care Rationing; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011635:Public Health Administration; D012935:Social Justice; D013222:State Medicine / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006113:United Kingdom