Resource Allocation and Planning in Health Care Systems

Resource allocation formulae and planning models have both been suggested as methods for calculating how to distribute funds for health care between a number of geographical regions. Recently, consideration has been given to how to link these two methods. An attempt is made in this paper to demonstrate the connection that exists between certain resource allocation formulae and planning models. Although this dependency may be a useful theoretical property, problems exist in that the best allocation formulae correspond to the worse planning models, and vice versa, so that this connection may be difficult to use in practice. Despite this problem, this property can be used to define some alternative allocation formulae, and a number of recommendations for doing this are given.