Is cost-effectiveness analysis preferred to severity of disease as the main guiding principle in priority setting in resource poor settings? The case of Uganda

Priority setting in health occurs at different levels and can be defined as distribution decisions involving clear and direct limitations of access to beneficial care or as a process of determining how health care resources should be allocated among competing programmes or people [1‐3]. This can be implicit whereby the decisions and reasons for those decisions are not clearly expressed or explicit where they are clearly stated [4‐6]. In the latter case, criteria can be used to facilitate the process. Several criteria for priority setting in health have been developed [7]. However, cost-effectiveness of interventions and severity of disease are some of the most widely discussed criteria. They are also some of the cardinal principles laid down in the Ugandan national health policy [8].

Cost-effectiveness compares cost per outcome of different interventions [9, 10]. Net economic cost is used as a numerator and improved health as a denominator and the lower the ratio the more preferred the intervention. Effects can be evaluated in terms of the impact of an intervention on mortality, morbidity, or quality of life. Cost-effectiveness analysis allows for comparison between interventions and makes allocation of resources explicit. Application of this procedure ensures that the maximum possible expected health benefit is realised, subject to whatever resource constraint is in effect [10, 8, 11].

Conversely, severity of disease has a variety of interpretations. We use the concept of the degree to which a condition affects a person's or population's health by causing death, handicap, disability, any kind of suffering or pain. Others use the concept of burden of disease measured in terms of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) which is a composite measure that combines both morbidity, mortality and other values in one single outcome measure [12, 11]. Severity of disease is an important concern in egalitarian approaches to priority setting [13].

Which one of the two criteria should be the most important criterion when setting priorities? In the extreme, a system that considers only cost-effectiveness would channel all its resources to people who happen to have the best potential to benefit from treatment in order to ensure efficient use of meagre resources [9, 14]. However, some studies have shown that using cost-effectiveness as a major criterion may not respond to what people want or expect [11, 13, 15, 16]. Conversely, a system that considers only severity may satisfy societal concern for the severely ill, but may lead to inefficient use of resources by overlooking the potential for patients to benefit from the interventions and ignoring costs. These factors are even more crucial in contexts of extreme resource scarcity [17‐20].

Attempts to prioritise solely on the basis of cost-effectiveness as the major guiding principle, like the first plan in the state of Oregon, have not had much success in practice [21]. This is partly because of the ethical tensions between the maximisation of health benefit and societal concerns for the severity of disease [22]. Studies done in Australia and Norway have also shown societal preference for severity of disease as opposed to cost-effectiveness of intervention, as main criteria for priority setting [23‐25].

Preferences may vary depending on culturally constructed values and norms in each population. Patterns of preferences may also be different in deprived settings where decision-makers are accustomed to having insufficient resources to treat everybody and having to exclude some beneficial treatments [8, 26]. Preferences may also differ with the level of priority setting [27, 28]. It is thought that people far removed from patients may have different values compared to those held by physicians, patients and their families [29, 30].

Most of the studies examining the relative importance of cost-effectiveness of intervention compared to severity of disease have been carried out in developed countries. This debate may seem far removed from the developing countries' contexts, such as Uganda where most severe diseases also have interventions that are cost-effective [30]. Still, the upsurge of non-communicable diseases, the resource demands due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the limited budgets for the health sector, makes this a relevant discussion.

We carried out a qualitative pre-survey study where eight group discussions were convened. Participants were homogeneous and included health workers, district planners, patient groups and the general population. These were asked what values they thought were important in priority setting in health. After a brain storming and deliberations, the values mentioned were ranked in order of perceived importance by consensus. All the groups, ranked severity of disease as the most important criteria, with the exception of the district planners' group, who ranked costs and effectiveness of care as the most important (Table 1).

We also carried out in-depth interviews with international development partners and national level government officers who identified health workers as the main actors in priority setting and we therefore let this group form the biggest proportion of our survey respondents.

The survey was carried out in Uganda. We included respondents at national level and from four districts (out of the 49 districts), namely Kampala, Adjumani, Hoima and Kamuli. These were purposefully selected to represent the northern, eastern, western and central geographical regions. A sample size of 610 was calculated (assuming a response rate of 50%). Respondents included health planners and workers involved in priority setting at national, district, health sub-district and facility levels, and representatives from the general population. At national level, a list of all health workers was obtained and the heads of the different directorates included. In case the selected person was not available, the questionnaire was given to the person next in charge. At the national teaching hospital, respondents included senior house officers and student nurses. In the district hospitals, questionnaires were given to health workers working in each of the four major departments (medicine, paediatrics, surgery and obstetrics and gynaecology), with instructions to distribute them randomly between the doctors and nurses. In the health centres, all health workers were included. All members of the district local council and district health team were included. The rest of the questionnaires were strategically by virtue of the respondents' having some knowledge of the subject we were exploring.

Respondents were reminded three times, at intervals of one week, after which non-response was registered.

Of the 610 questionnaires sent out, 413 (67.7%) were retrieved. The lowest response rate was from the northern region, in which there are ongoing acts of war. Fifty one percent of the survey respondents were health workers at health sub-district level. Respondents not directly employed in the health sector (politicians, administrators, other civil servants and the general population) accounted for 28% of the study population. The mean age of the respondents was 30.4 years (Table 2).

Using the mean rank given to the actors by the 413 survey respondents, the current actors in priority setting in health, in order of perceived role played included health professionals, donors and government officers respectively (Fig. 2). Similar results were found in the in-depth interviews. However, in response to which the ideal actors should be, health professionals maintained their first position, while donors and politicians exchanged ranks with patients and the public respectively.

The survey respondents strongly supported the importance of considering both cost-effectiveness of interventions and the severity of the condition as criteria for priority setting. This is in line with the current literature on criteria for priority setting, which indicates the importance of both criteria. However, the finding that significantly more people involved in priority setting supported the consideration of cost-effectiveness may be a reflection of their experiences with priority setting at their levels.

The findings in the first two scenarios may be regarded as reasonable and the choices may not have been particularly difficult. In the third scenario, where respondents were forced to make a definite choice between cost-effectiveness and severity, there was a clear preference for the severity of the disease over the cost-effectiveness of intervention. This is surprising, given that Uganda is a context of extreme scarcity of resources; one may have expected a preference for cost-effectiveness. The lack of statistical differences in the responses to this critical question, in relation to age, designation, level of work, and whether or not the respondent considered priority setting to be part of their work, was also surprising. Some differences might have been expected, especially between actors at different levels of priority setting, and health workers and non-health workers; since it is generally believed that people far removed from patients may hold different values.

Our findings should, however, be interpreted with caution. Since the sample was strategic, with a majority of the respondents being health workers, the findings may not be representative for the Ugandan population as such. However, several studies exploring public values in priority setting indicate that the public regards health workers to be their legitimate representatives [32, 33, 2, 34, 4]. Given the weakness of civil society in Uganda, we regard the health workers' preferences as a first proxy for better understanding the public's values. Furthermore, being self-administered, we are unable to rule out the limitation of poor interpretation of the questions. The hypothetical situations may be too simplistic. This was intended since the study was very exploratory in the context. Moreover, given respondents' sensitivity to the phrasing of the questions, [15] we can only cautiously compare our findings with those from other studies, as we did not use exactly the same wording. In the third scenario, for example, the response might have been different if the scenario had consisted in treating one severely ill patient with an expensive treatment or many less severely ill patients with less costly treatments. We are also aware that these responses could differ in different circumstances and may be dependent on the type of respondents [23]. We also recognise the limitations to empirical ethics and the fact that there are additional criteria and values of relevance to priority setting which are not presented in this paper [35]. However we maintain that the findings, provide an initial step to the understanding some of the values held by people from a low-income context, more so since similar results were found in the pre-survey group discussions and in another study in similar settings [36].

Although the questions were different, our findings that the respondents preferred severity might be comparable to the studies carried out in Norway and Australia, both of which are high-income countries [23‐25]. This may to some appear unreasonable in this context. However, societal concerns for equality and solidarity, seem to be as relevant in resource-poor settings as they are in resource-rich settings [19, 22, 33].

On the other hand, these results may be explained by lack of respondents' familiarity with these concepts or the way the scenarios were formulated in the number of beneficiaries and the budget limits were not specified. These issues require more exploration since such findings may have implications for the designing of the essential health care package.

The survey respondents' strong preference for severity of disease did not fully comply with what the other actors expressed in the in-depth interviews. In particular, the international development partners, were more positive to setting priorities according to cost-effectiveness of interventions as compared to the survey respondents. This may reflect that it is easier for donors to consider cost-effectiveness of treatments, than it is for health workers who meet the patients directly. In such instances, where the key actors and those representing the interests of the public do not agree on values guiding health policy, explicit negotiation, deliberation and open debates about values are required.

The persistent number of respondents who either insisted on strict equality (3%) (treating both patients as equal), or declined to respond to the questions, may reflect respondents' escape from making difficult decisions, aversion to hypothetical choices or indeed a strong preference for equality [14].

To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first studies conducted in a developing country to establish the relative importance placed on cost-effectiveness and disease severity as criteria for priority setting.

The current main actors in priority setting in Uganda include, in order of influence, development partners, the Ministries of Finance and Health, health professionals and politicians. Our survey respondents indicated that health professionals, patients and the public should play a leading role ahead of the development partners.

In this study, the national survey respondents' preferences differed from those elicited in in-depth interviews with the development partners. Whereas the vast majority of the survey respondents preferred severity of disease to cost-effectiveness of intervention as the guiding principle, most of the development partners preferred cost-effectiveness of intervention. The results of the national survey are surprisingly similar to those from contexts with relatively more resources and different cultures.

To ensure legitimacy in decision-making, it is necessary that actors are transparent about their values and encourage an open debate on difficult choices [42]. A schema such as Fig. 4 could facilitate open discussions. These and other additional values and criteria would inform decision-making processes and debate on criteria for priority setting in contexts of extreme resource constraints.