More new and expensive treatments emerge and sometimes patients get access to these treatments before there are any official recommendations of whether the healthcare should offer these treatments or not. If it turns out that the treatment is not cost-effective, then several questions arise, questions which are difficult for the healthcare to handle:
1. Should we withdraw the treatment for patients with previous access to this treatment?
2. Should we withhold the treatment for new patients, which have a need for it?
3. Is it ethically warranted to treat new patients and patients with previous access to treatments differently? Or must we withdraw and withhold treatments equally?
In my research, I combine interview studies with psychological experiments to explore what attitudes physicians-, patient organization representatives-, and other actors have on this problem, what factors they depend on, how robust these attitudes are, and whether it is possible to affect them, to hopefully arrive at ethically warranted recommendations adapted to stable traits of human psychology.
Did you find this interesting? Or are you wondering more about the subject? In any case, feel free to contact me!
