Health economics
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Priority setting research in health economics has traditionally employed quantitative methodologies and been informed by post-positivist philosophical assumptions about the world and the nature of knowledge. These approaches have been rewarded with well-developed and validated tools. However, it is now commonly noted that there has been limited uptake of economic analysis into actual priority setting and resource allocation decisions made by health-care systems. ⋯ These are illustrated with examples drawn from a real-world priority setting study. The examples demonstrate how such conceptually powerful qualitative traditions produce distinctive findings that offer unique insight into organizational contexts and decision-maker behavior. We argue that such investigations offer untapped benefits for the study of organizational priority setting and thus should be pursued more frequently by the health economics research community.