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Health technology appraisal and the courts: accountability for reasonableness and the judicial model of procedural justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2010

Keith Syrett
Keith Syrett*
Affiliation:
Reader in Public Law and Health Policy, School of Law, University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Clifton, Bristol, UK
*
*Correspondence to: Keith Syrett, Reader in Public Law and Health Policy, School of Law, University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Queens Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8 1RJ, UK. Email: keith.syrett@bristol.ac.uk
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Abstract

Recommendations issued by agencies undertaking appraisals of health technologies at the national level may impact upon the availability of certain treatments and services in some publicly funded health systems, and, as such, have regularly been subject to challenge, including by way of litigation. In addition to expertise in the evaluation of evidence, fairness of procedures has been identified as a necessary component of a claim to legitimacy in such circumstances. This article analyses the assessment of courts in three jurisdictions of the fairness of decision-making by such agencies and evaluates the judicial reading of procedural justice developed in this particular context against the conditions of ‘accountability for reasonableness’.

Type
Articles
Information
Health Economics, Policy and Law , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , 06 September 2011 , pp. 469 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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