Priority Setting in the Austrian Healthcare System: Results from a Discrete Choice Experiment and Implications for Mental Health

With changing health needs, policy makers have to balance constrained resources and increasing demands. Preference-based approaches offer complementary information for priority setting decisions and a useful tool to support decision-making. Preferences over efficiency and equity and an empirical measure of their trade-off are calculated using a discrete choice experiment on stakeholders in Austria. Subsequently, health care interventions, including mental health, are ranked in composite league tables. Findings suggest a strong preference for criteria of efficiency; with equity parameters (with the exception of severity of condition) reducing utility from a given intervention. Efficiency/equity ratios are calculated at 3.5 and 5 for interventions targeted at younger and middle age populations, respectively, while for older populations this ratio is negative implying a rejection of all equity criteria. Irrespective of such differences interventions targeting mental health rank highly on all CLTs.