title: Measuring needs for priority setting in healthcare planning and policy.
abstract: Much research aimed at developing measures for normative criteria to guide the assessment of healthcare resource allocation decisions has focused on health maximization, equity concerns and more recently approaches based on health capabilities. However, a widely embraced idea is that health resources should be allocated to meet health needs. Little attention has been given to the principle of need which is often mentioned as an alternative independent criteria that could be used to guide healthcare evaluations. This paper develops a model and indicator of need satisfaction that aggregates the health needs of a population in a particular time period into a single measure that weights individual health needs by the severity of their ill health. The paper provides a first step towards formalizing the principle of need as a measurable objective for healthcare policy and we discuss some challenges for future research, including incorporating the duration of time into need-based health evaluations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; Department of Philosophy, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, United States. Electronic address: andersherlitz@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Anders
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Herlitz
authors.affiliation: School of Politics and International Relations and the UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin, Ireland. Electronic address: david.horan@eui.eu.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Horan
mesh_terms: D018672:Community Health Planning / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D006291:Health Policy / Q000639:trends*; D006292:Health Priorities / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D020380:Needs Assessment / Q000639:trends*; D014894:Weights and Measures
keywords: Aggregation; Health care rationing; Needs; Outcome evaluation; Scarcity