Aspects on priority settings in cancer treatment and care

The widening gap between available resources and increasing possibilities to diagnose and treat different medical conditions has resulted in new attention to priority setting. The issue is complicated and harbours several obstacles because of different valuations concerning the needs of patient groups, the true results (patient benefit) of medical actions, and also important ethical considerations. Earlier attempts have been unsuccessful in introducing a prioritization milieu into the medical profession, probably due to vague requests for an open and sharp prioritization process. With a sharpened competition of allocating resources for different medical actions, the medical profession of the cancer sector needs to have a tool for explaining consequences for the different cancer patient groups and what is achieved by the cancer treatments and the care. A model for ranking lists consisting of pairs of patient conditions and medical actions is presented, and the principle for using these lists for priority setting in medical society is discussed.