Quantifying public preferences for healthcare priorities in Taiwan through an integrated citizens jury and discrete choice experiment.

Priority setting is a critical process for national healthcare systems that need to allocate limited resources across unlimited healthcare demands. In recent decades, health policymakers have identified the need to combine technical dimensions of priority setting with political dimensions relating to community values. A range of methods for engaging the public in priority setting has been developed, yet there is no consensus around the most effective methodology. A 2014 paper proposed the integration of two methods currently used for soliciting public preferences around health care services: i) an individual survey instrument, Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs) and ii) Citizen Juries (CJs), a group-based model that incorporates education and deliberative dialogue. This pilot study is among the first to empirically test this integrated method to assess its value across two domains: does the CJ process alter participant preferences and are the consensus values of the CJ captured by the individualistic DCE? The two-part, mixed methods study was administered in Taipei, Taiwan in August of 2016. Twenty-seven participants completed a DCE as a baseline pre-test, ranking a set of attributes in terms of importance for future resource allocation under Taiwan's National Health Insurance System. Twenty of the participants next took part in the integrated CJ-DCE method, which consisted of education and facilitated dialogue through a CJ, followed by retaking the DCE survey. Participant preferences changed after undergoing the CJ process and these new, group-based preferences were reflected in the second DCE, meaning participants did not revert to their original individualistic preferences. The results of this study demonstrate that the integrated CJ-DCE method adds value in allowing an ethically communitarian set of values to be developed and captured via an individualistic methodology. Further testing is needed to investigate the reliability of our findings and how it may be implemented to maximize public acceptance.

Integrating Citizens Juries and Discrete Choice Experiments: Methodological issues in the measurement of public values in healthcare priority setting.

All health systems struggle with unlimited needs for healthcare, yet limited resources with which to address them. Under national health insurance systems, policymakers must make explicit and potentially contested decisions around resource allocation. Policymakers have recognized the need to include public values in decisions regarding the distribution of resources across competing health priorities. Given the complex nature of these decisions, however, research into how to effectively measure public preferences is underdeveloped. Measuring community values poses special challenges since they involve normative judgments that can be interpreted differently across individuals and communities. Researchers have previously proposed integrating two methods that are currently used for measuring public preferences around healthcare services: i) an individual survey instrument, the Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) and ii) a group-based model that incorporates informed opinions and deliberative dialogue, Citizen Juries (CJs). This current paper proposes a framework for implementing that integration and assesses methodological issues in the integration of DCEs and CJs, including issues of generalizability and validity. CJs and DCEs have conflicting epistemological and methodological foundations, which impact how researchers might analyze results of the integrated method. Researchers and policymakers interested in measuring social values should determine the philosophical orientation of their research question prior to study design, which will assist in choosing an appropriate research method. Further research is needed to investigate the empirical validity of the integrated method and how it may be implemented to maximize public acceptance. Advancing these methods can provide an improved instrument for capturing public preferences for policymakers tasked with priority setting in diverse contexts.

Critical evaluation of international health programs: Reframing global health and evaluation.

Striking changes in the funding and implementation of international health programs in recent decades have stimulated debate about the role of communities in deciding which health programs to implement. An important yet neglected piece of that discussion is the need to change norms in program evaluation so that analysis of community ownership, beyond various degrees of "participation," is seen as central to strong evaluation practices. This article challenges mainstream evaluation practices and proposes a framework of Critical Evaluation with 3 levels: upstream evaluation assessing the "who" and "how" of programming decisions; midstream evaluation focusing on the "who" and "how" of selecting program objectives; and downstream evaluation, the focus of current mainstream evaluation, which assesses whether the program achieved its stated objectives. A vital tenet of our framework is that a community possesses the right to determine the path of its health development. A prerequisite of success, regardless of technical outcomes, is that programs must address communities' high priority concerns. Current participatory methods still seldom practice community ownership of program selection because they are vulnerable to funding agencies' predetermined priorities. In addition to critiquing evaluation practices and proposing an alternative framework, we acknowledge likely challenges and propose directions for future research.

Assessing health information technology in a national health care system--an example from Taiwan.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this article is to investigate one core research question: How can health information technology (HIT) be assessed in a national health care system context? DESIGN/METHODOLOGY: We examine this question by taking a systematic approach within a national care system, in which the purpose of HIT is to contribute to a common national health care system's goal. to promote population health in an efficient way. Based on this approach we first develop a framework and our criteria of assessment, and then using Taiwan as a case study, demonstrate how one can apply this framework to assess a national system's HIT. The five criteria we developed are how well does the HIT (1) provide accessible and accurate public health and health care information to the population; (2) collect and provide population health and health care data for government and researchers to analyze population health and processes and outcomes of health care services, (3) provide accessible and timely information that helps to improve provision of cost-effective health care at an institutional level and promotes system-wide efficiency; (4) minimize transaction and administrative costs of the health care system; and (5) establish channels for population participation in governance while also protecting individual privacy. FINDINGS: The results indicate that Taiwan has high levels of achievement in two criteria while falling short in the other three. Major lessons we learned from this study are that HIT exists to serve a health care system, and the national health care system context dictates how one assesses its HIT. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: There is a large body of literature published on the implementation of HIT and its impact on the quality and cost of health care delivery. The vast majority of the literature, however, is focused on a micro institutional level such as a hospital or a bit higher up, on an HMO or health insurance firm. Few have gone further to evaluate the implementation of HIT and its impact on a national health care system. The lack of such research motivated this study. The major contributions of this study are (i) to develop a framework that follows systems thinking principles and (ii) propose a process through which a nation can identify its objectives for HIT and systematically assess its national HIT system. Using Taiwan's national health care system as a case study, this paper demonstrated how it can be done.