| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
| Health policy and the politics of evidence | | Author(s) | Timothy Milewa, Christine Barry |
| Journal title | Social Policy & Administration, vol 39, no 5, October 2005 |
| Pages | pp 498-512 |
| Source | http://www.blackwell-synergy.com |
| Keywords | Health services ; Medical care ; Technology ; Policy ; Qualitative Studies. |
| Annotation | National decisions on the drugs, treatments and medical devices that should be funded through public expenditure are a fundamental element of health policy. But despite a political emphasis on evidence-based policy, the results of rigorous clinical trials and statistical modelling techniques rarely speak for themselves. So, does the pre-eminence traditionally accorded to quantitative data in the medical field underpin policy decisions on a consistent basis? Or are more subtle, less transparent characteristics of context and interaction evident in the shaping of attendant decisions? This article considers these questions by drawing on a study of decision-making in the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the body established by the UK Government to decide whether selected health technologies should be made available through the NHS in England and Wales. In broad terms, the findings point to the primacy of arguments based on quantitatively oriented, experimentally derived data, but also to a discursive hegemony of clinicians and health economists in mediating, including or debarring more qualitative, experientially based evidence. A more complex, dynamic understanding of policy governance in the field of health technology appraisal - founded on a discursive appropriation of the idea of the "common good" - goes some way to explaining the persistence of this hegemony, despite an avowedly inclusive, plural approach to decision-making. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-051017203 A |
| Classmark | L: LK: Y9: QAD: 3DP |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|