Patients' views of priority setting in health care: an interview survey in one practice

To explore the assumptions underlying consumers' responses to questions of resource priorities in the NHS.

Qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with a heterogeneous sample of 16 patients drawn from a general practice.

Interviewees were not persuaded that they had a legitimate role to play in the prioritisation of services. They supported the principle of equity and were reluctant to use their own personal needs as a basis for resource allocation; instead they argued from what they perceived to be the needs of others.

Paradoxically, surveys of consumers' views on health care priorities probably do not elicit the personal ideas of respondents but tap into a more general ideological position closer to an earlier collectivist notion of health care.