Resource scarcity chasing scarce resources: Health economics and geriatric psychiatry
✍ Scribed by Professor Martin Knapp
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1995
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 846 KB
- Volume
- 10
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0885-6230
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
RESOURCE SCARCITY
Economics has been dubbed the 'science of scarcity'. Thomas Carlyle called it the 'dismal science' and former Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home once remarked, 'There are two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble and the economic ones are incomprehensible'. Many a clinician in today's National Health Service would doubtless share the former Prime Minister's sentiments. The discipline of economics is clearly not in danger of collapsing under the weight of popular acclaim. On the other hand, the demand for health economics insights has multiplied many times over in just a couple of decades, and not just in the UK.
Economics is the academic discipline which has concerned itself most with how best to allocate an individuaI's or a society's limited resources across alternative uses. In the process it has built up some powerful but also sometimes fairly impenetrable theory, as well as a number of helpful but sometimes rather heavy empirical methods. Economics has considerable relevance to the development of health policy and the planning of health services, including those for elderly people with mental health problems. This article reviews some of its components and core contributions, and identifies some constraints on its fuller impact.
Relative to needs or demands, there are too few resources. This applies to psychogeriatricians, drugs, home help hours, day centre places, hospital beds and virtually every service or professional input to the support, care or treatment of elderly people. Why is there scarcity? Consider the prevalence and treatment of dementia.