Priority setting in osteoarthritis

The Population Health Division of the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing commissioned a research project into priority setting to be completed in two stages. The first stage involved a review of priority setting models by Segal and Chen. The second stage involved case study of the application of the best performing Health Sector Wide Disease Based Model (HsW). Osteoarthritis (OA) was chosen as a suitable case study for application and further refinement of the model. It is an extremely common condition, affecting 2.2 million Australians, and responsible for a substantial reduction in their quality of life. An estimated $1,000 million is spent each year on the management of OA, largely to address symptoms. The number of potential modalities for reducing disease burden in persons at risk and those with established disease is large, covering primary care, pharmacological interventions, physical therapies, surgical interventions and population health initiatives. The major focus of interventions is to enhance quality of life, largely to control pain and extend physical function, thus a priority setting exercise in OA provides a unique opportunity to explore methods for the measurement and comparison of quality of life outcomes