University of California Researchers Have Published New Study Findings on Health Services (Public legitimacy of healthcare resource allocation committees: lessons learned from assessing an Israeli case study): Health and Medicine – Health Services

2022 JUN 27 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- New research on health services is the subject of a new report. According to news originating from the University of California by NewsRx editors, the research stated, “The National Health Insurance Law enacted in 1995 stipulates a list of health services to which all Israeli residents are entitled. For the past 20 years, the list has been updated annually, as a function of a predetermined budget, according to recommendations from the Public National Advisory Committee (PNAC), which evaluates and prioritizes candidate technologies.”

The news editors obtained a quote from the research from University of California: “We assessed the legitimacy of this resource-allocation process as reflected in Israeli public discourse and its congruence with the accountability for reasonableness (A4R) framework. A qualitative analysis of public discourse documents (articles in the print media, court rulings and parliamentary debates (N = 119) was conducted to assess the perceived legitimacy by the Israeli public of the PNAC. Further content analysis of these documents and semi-structured interviews with stakeholders (N = 70) revealed the mainstays and threats to its legitimacy. Based on these data sources, on governmental documents specifying PNAC’s procedures, and on data from participant observations, we assessed its congruence with A4R’s four conditions: publicity, relevance, revision and appeals, regulation. The PNAC enjoys ongoing support for its legitimacy in Israeli public discourse, which stem from its perceived professional focus and transparency. These strengths are consistent with the A4R’s emphasis on the publicity and the relevance conditions. The three major threats to PNAC’s legitimacy pertain to: (1) the composition of the committee; (2) its operating procedures; (3) its guiding principles. These perceived shortcomings are also consistent with incongruencies between PNAC’s work model and A4R. These findings thus further support the empirical validity of the A4R.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “The analysis of the fit between the PNAC and A4R points to refinements in all four conditions that could make the A4R a more precise evaluative framework. Concurrently, it highlights areas that the PNAC should improve to increase its legitimacy, such as incorporating cost-effectiveness analyses and including patient representatives in the decision-making process. Hebrew and Arabic abstracts for this article are available as an additional file.”

For more information on this research see: Public legitimacy of healthcare resource allocation committees: lessons learned from assessing an Israeli case study. BMC Health Services Research, 2022,22(1):1-12. (BMC Health Services Research - http://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com). The publisher for BMC Health Services Research is BMC.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-07992-6.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Yael Assor, Department of Anthropology, University of California. Additional authors for this research include Dan Greenberg.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)