No abstract

Priority setting in health care has been long recognized as an intrinsically complex and value-laden process. Yet, health technology assessment agencies (HTAs) presently employ value assessment frameworks that are ill fitted to capture the range and diversity of stakeholder values and thereby risk compromising the legitimacy of their recommendations. We propose "evidence-informed deliberative processes" as an alternative framework with the aim to enhance this legitimacy. This framework integrates two increasingly popular and complementary frameworks for priority setting: multicriteria decision analysis and accountability for reasonableness. Evidence-informed deliberative processes are, on one hand, based on early, continued stakeholder deliberation to learn about the importance of relevant social values. On the other hand, they are based on rational decision-making through evidence-informed evaluation of the identified values. The framework has important implications for how HTA agencies should ideally organize their processes. First, HTA agencies should take the responsibility of organizing stakeholder involvement. Second, agencies are advised to integrate their assessment and appraisal phases, allowing for the timely collection of evidence on values that are considered relevant. Third, HTA agencies should subject their decision-making criteria to public scrutiny. Fourth, agencies are advised to use a checklist of potentially relevant criteria and to provide argumentation for how each criterion affected the recommendation. Fifth, HTA agencies must publish their argumentation and install options for appeal. The framework should not be considered a blueprint for HTA agencies but rather an aspirational goal-agencies can take incremental steps toward achieving this goal.

The present study demonstrates notable differences in CDS practice among various types of physicians. To what extent this is related to different patient populations or to different expertise requires further investigation. The use of CDS for nonphysical discomfort calls for critical examination to avoid ambiguous practice.

Background: Two guidelines addressing palliative sedation have been published in the Netherlands in 2002 and 2003. The objective of the present study is to determine adherence to the guidelines for palliative sedation with regard to prescription. The study is restricted to the practice of continuous deep palliative sedation. Methods: A structured retrospective questionnaire was administered to 1464 physicians concerning their last case of deep sedation during the past 12 months. Physicians included Dutch hospital specialists, general practitioners, and nursing home physicians. Results: The response rate was 36%. A total of 43% (95% confidence interval [CI], 37%-49%) of the responding physicians did not adhere to the guidelines. Sources of deviation were the use of basic medication other than a benzodiazepine (30%), which mostly involved morphine, and omissions in adjuvant medication (13%). Nonsignificant positive association was found for consultation of a palliative care expert (odds ratio [OR], 3.86; 95%

Interactive technology assessment (iTA) provides an answer to the ethical problem of normative bias in evaluation research. This normative bias develops when relevant perspectives on the evaluand (the thing being evaluated) are neglected. In iTA this bias is overcome by incorporating different perspectives into the assessment. As a consequence, justification of decisions based on the assessment is provided by stakeholders having achieved agreement. In this article, agreement is identified with wide reflective equilibrium to show that it indeed has the potential of justifying decisions. We work out several conditions for this agreement to be achievable and just.