Delivering Cost Effective Healthcare Services

In recent years, governments are searching for ways to deliver the equity, efficiency, cost-effectiveness healthcare services to maintain and improve their health systems (WHO, 2004). The aim of equal access to health care for all population groups is the common target for many health care systems. The Australian health care system provides resources on the equal access of a mixed private and public funding system which covers the entire population.

As Palmer & Torgerson (1999) pointed out that decision makers in healthcare flied are dealing with the increasing challenges of the growing demand for health care services with limited funds. Whereas economists argued that the achievement of greater efficiency from reasonable resources should be the first principle for priority processes (Palmer & Torgerson, 1999). Furthermore, Sreenivasan (2007) stated that the equality of opportunity rationale for universal access to health care refers to it as the individual's fair share of opportunity.

This paper addressed the definitions of equity, efficiency and effectiveness in health care. Discussed the interactions between those three concepts and noted how to guide measurement and accountability; it also discussed the practical importance of clarity in defining this concept, in terms of consequences for both policies and measurement.

Equity

According to Starfield (2006), equity in health is defined as the “differences in health that are not only unnecessary and avoidable, but also considered as unfair and unjust,” and he indicated that “unfairness” and “unjustness” can be measured by certain intervations. However, Braveman & Gruskin (2003) have got other understandings for equity. They examined that the concept of health equity focuses...

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...nsistent with patients’ reasonable expectations and contemporary professional standards of care, reflecting both societal and professional norms. Campbell (2000) summed up that care is only described as evidence-based when there is good scientific evidence of a link between process and outcome.

In order to deliver cost–effectiveness health care for different social groups, the impertinence of reallocating the limited resources has to be highlighted between differing priorities. As BLaxter (1996) stated that, the inputs are as important as outputs in terms of the population demands, therefore the resources should be displaced efficiently to the subgroups that indicates the most potential for better health outcome (Blaxter, 1996). Also it is the community’s choice to decide where the resources should be allocated to particular disadvantage groups within a society.