Ordeals in Health Care

This is a past event

Ethics and Efficient Delivery

Couldn’t join us for the event? Check out some of the panelists’ slide presentations below!

Description

Economic ordeals are interventions that deliberately make access to products or services more difficult in an effort to improve resource allocation. In this vein, making patients wait in long lines to schedule an appointment with a specialist might discourage patients with needs that could be met by less qualified personnel from taking up the specialist’s time, thus freeing up time for those with complex needs. Similarly, putting brand-name medications at the bottom of a long list of options on clinicians’ computers might encourage them to prescribe a generic brand listed closer to the top.

Recent research in development economics, behavioral economics, and health policy suggests that some economic ordeals could help target health resources to patients who are more likely to utilize these resources, without the regressive effects of co-pays and other forms of financial participation on the part of patients. However, making health care deliberately less accessible raises ethical challenges. Is it not the case that ordeals discourage utilization by patients with acute needs? Do these ordeals affect some disadvantaged populations disproportionately? And do deliberate obstacles to health resource utilization violate the human right to health?

This workshop brought together leading scholars in economics, ethics, health policy, public health, medicine, sociology, and law to explore these questions.

This event is organized by Nir Eyal, DPhil, Associate Professor of Global Health and Population, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and Anders Herlitz, PhD, Visiting Scientist, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and Researcher, Institute for Future Studies, Stockholm, Sweden.

Agenda

Day 1: Thursday, May 10

1:30-2:00pm, Registration

2:00-2:15pm, Welcome Remarks

2:15-3:45pm, Plenary Session

​3:45-4:45pm, Efficiency: Maximizing Financial and Medical Outcomes

4:45-5:00pm, Break

Coffee and refreshments will be provided.

5:00-6:15, Ethics of Ordeals Research

Day 2: Friday, May 11

8:00-8:30am, Registration

A continental breakfast will be provided.

8:30-9:45am, Distributive Ethics

​9:45-10:45am, Autonomy, Rights, and Dignity

​10:45-11:00am, Break

11:00am-12:00pm, Modeling Burdens

​12:00-12:15pm, Break to Pick Up Lunch

Lunch will be provided.

12:15-1:30pm, Practical Implications

Learn More

Background on Ordeals in Health Care

Slide Presentations

Co-sponsored by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University; the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School; the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government; and the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, with support from the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund at Harvard University.