title: Equity in healthcare resource allocation decision making: A systematic review.
abstract: To identify elements of endorsed definitions of equity in healthcare and classify domains of these definitions so that policy makers, managers, clinicians, and politicians can form an operational definition of equity that reflects the values and preferences of the society they serve.
  
  
  
  Systematic review where verbatim text describing explicit and implicit definitions of equity were extracted and subjected to a thematic analysis.
  
  
  
  The full holdings of the AMED, CINAHL plus, OVID Medline, Scopus, PsychInfo and ProQuest (ProQuest Health & Medical Complete, ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health Source, ProQuest Social Science Journals) were individually searched in April 2015.
  
  
  
  Studies were included if they provided an original, explicit or implicit definition of equity in regards to healthcare resource allocation decision making. Papers that only cited earlier definitions of equity and provided no new information or extensions to this definition were excluded.
  
  
  
  The search strategy yielded 74 papers appropriate for this review; 60 of these provided an explicit definition of equity, with a further 14 papers discussing implicit elements of equity that the authors endorsed in regards to healthcare resource allocation decision making. FIVE KEY THEMES EMERGED: i) Equalisation across the health service supply/access/outcome chain, ii) Need or potential to benefit, iii) Groupings of equalisation, iv) Caveats to equalisation, and v) Close enough is good enough.
  
  
  
  There is great inconsistency in definitions of equity endorsed by different authors. Operational definitions of equity need to be more explicit in addressing these five thematic areas before they can be directly applied to healthcare resource allocation decisions.
authors.affiliation: Physiotherapy Department, Monash University, Frankston, Australia. Electronic address: haylee.lane@monash.edu.
authors.forename: Haylee
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lane
authors.affiliation: Physiotherapy Department, Monash University, Frankston, Australia; Allied Health Research Unit, Monash Health, Clayton, Australia.
authors.forename: Mitchell
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sarkies
authors.affiliation: Centre of Applied Social Research, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.affiliation: Physiotherapy Department, Monash University, Frankston, Australia; Allied Health Research Unit, Monash Health, Clayton, Australia.
authors.forename: Terry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Haines
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D000069576:Health Equity / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D040841:Resource Allocation / Q000592:standards*
keywords: Decision making; Equity; Healthcare; Resource allocation