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Prioritization in Medicine pp 241–257Cite as

Age and Personal Responsibility as Prioritization Criteria? The View of the Public and of Physicians

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Abstract

Health systems worldwide are struggling with the need to control costs to maintain system viability. With the combination of new expensive health technologies, an aging population and changing epidemiology on one hand, and worsening economic conditions and reductions in tax revenues on the other hand, the pressure to make structural changes is expected to continue growing. An efficient but also fair allocation of limited medical resources is needed. Priority setting in health-care services according to some predefined criteria is proposed as one possibility to handle the problem of limited resources. Various criteria have been offered, from purely medical ones to personal and social ones. One of the most controversially discussed criteria is the age of the patient.Personal responsibility is another debated criterion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology and Methods, Jacobs University Bremen, Campus Ring 1, Bremen, D-28759, Germany

    Adele Diederich

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  1. Adele Diederich
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Correspondence to Adele Diederich .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Healthcare Management and Health Sciences, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Bayern, Germany

    Eckhard Nagel

  2. Institute for Healthcare Management and Health Sciences, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

    Michael Lauerer

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Diederich, A. (2016). Age and Personal Responsibility as Prioritization Criteria? The View of the Public and of Physicians. In: Nagel, E., Lauerer, M. (eds) Prioritization in Medicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21112-1_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21112-1_17

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-21111-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-21112-1

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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