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There is an increasing demand for research in maintenance prioritization methods, as budgets for maintenance of public buildings are unlikely to meet the maintenance needs. It is possible for government maintenance authorities to improve this situation by ensuring that the best solution is achieved in the maintenance programme through appropriate priority setting methods. A maintenance plan that is based on a rational assessment of priorities and up‐to‐date knowledge of the condition of the property stock will help to ensure the best use of available resources. Critically reviews various methods of maintenance priority setting for public buildings in the UK and Hong Kong. It also provides recommendations for maintenance managers in selecting and using the most appropriate method for their own organizations.

Maintenance is a compulsory cost in any asset's operation and requires sufficient budget to be supported. However, insufficient maintenance allocation would lead to maintenance prioritization being practiced as a solution to relief the maintenance demands. The purpose of this paper is to review and discuss the related literature on the factors considered and methods practiced in maintenance prioritization, especially in asset managements.

A thorough literature search related to factors and methods used in maintenance prioritization was conducted through several journal databases. The keywords maintenance priority, maintenance prioritization, priority management and maintenance planning were used. Publications related to maintenance priority from the period of 1990 to 2016 were reviewed and filtered out. Literature focusing on methods and factors related to maintenance prioritization were analyzed and discussed.

This study presented the trend and publications related to maintenance priority throughout 1990 to 2016. Publications related with methods and factors were analyzed. The most used priority-setting methods include analytical hierarchy process; priority criterion; priority matrix; and failure mode and effect analysis. Factors for maintenance priority were categorized into four categories which are technical, financial, social and political category. A discussion on the strategic direction of maintenance prioritization was conducted to highlight future research and possible improvements.

The paper contains a state of the art on publications and discussion related to the factors, methods and suggestions on the strategic aspect of maintenance prioritization. It offers insights and information on the current body of knowledge to academics, researchers, maintenance managers, practitioners and stakeholders concerned with asset management.

Current conditions have intensified the need for health systems to engage in the difficult task of priority setting. As the search for a “magic bullet” is replaced by an appreciation for the interplay between evidence, interests, culture, and outcomes, progress in relation to these dimensions requires assessment of achievements to date and identification of areas where knowledge and practice require attention most urgently. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

An international survey was administered to experts in the area of priority setting. The survey consisted of open-ended questions focusing on notable achievements, policy and practice challenges, and areas for future research in the discipline of priority setting. It was administered online between February and March of 2015.

“Decision-making frameworks” and “Engagement” were the two most frequently mentioned notable achievements. “Priority setting in practice” and “Awareness and education” were the two most frequently mentioned policy and practical challenges. “Priority setting in practice” and “Engagement” were the two most frequently mentioned areas in need of future research.

Sampling bias toward more developed countries. Future study could use findings to create a more concise version to distribute more broadly.

Globally, these findings could be used as a platform for discussion and decision making related to policy, practice, and research in this area.

Whilst this study reaffirmed the continued importance of many longstanding themes in the priority setting literature, it is possible to also discern clear shifts in emphasis as the discipline progresses in response to new challenges.

The purpose of this chapter is to describe a method for priority setting that can be used to identify options for disinvestment, and is also meant to serve as a tool for re-allocation of resources to achieve better outcomes with a given pot of resources.

This chapter draws on findings from the application of a priority setting and resource allocation framework known as Program Budgeting and Marginal Analysis (PBMA). Case studies are used to illustrate key points around implementation including factors for success and guidelines for improving priority setting in practice.

PBMA has been applied in over 150 settings over the last 30 years. Purposes varied from focusing strictly on disinvestment to examining opportunities for re-allocation. Many organizations report continued use of the framework and decision makers typically express a desire to not revert to historical allocation or political negotiation in deciding on the funding for programs.

Practical implications of this body of work on priority setting abound in that there are significant opportunities to improve resource allocation practice including better engagement of staff, clinicians and public members, greater use of evidence in decision making and improving process transparency.

As healthcare resources are limited, particularly in predominantly publicly funded health systems, prudent use of resources is critical. Actually applying the appropriate tools to ensure that funding aligns with organizational and system objectives is paramount.

Although there is a large body of literature on priority setting particularly in countries like the United Kingdom and Canada, this chapter serves to highlight key messages specifically in the context of fiscal constraint and in relation to the concept of disinvestment or service reduction.

Public sector interest in methods for priority setting and program or policy evaluation has grown considerably over the last several decades, given increased expectations for accountable and efficient use of resources and emphasis on evidence‐based decision making as a component of good management practice. While there has been some occasional effort to conduct evaluation of priority setting projects, the literatures around priority setting and evaluation have largely evolved separately. In this paper, the aim is to bring them together.

The contention is that evaluation theory is a means by which evaluators reflect upon what it is they are doing when they do evaluation work. Theories help to organize thinking, sort out relevant from irrelevant information, provide transparent grounds for particular implementation choices, and can help resolve problematic issues which may arise in the conduct of an evaluation project.

A detailed review of three major branches of evaluation theory – methods, utilization, and valuing – identifies how such theories can guide the development of efforts to evaluate priority setting and resource allocation initiatives. Evaluation theories differ in terms of their guiding question, anticipated setting or context, evaluation foci, perspective from which benefits are calculated, and typical methods endorsed.

Choosing a particular theoretical approach will structure the way in which any priority setting process is evaluated. The paper suggests that explicitly considering evaluation theory makes key aspects of the evaluation process more visible to all stakeholders, and can assist in the design of effective evaluation of priority setting processes; this should iteratively serve to improve the understanding of priority setting practices themselves.

From the late 1980s and onwards health care in Sweden has come under increasing financial pressure, forcing policy makers to consider restrictions. The purpose of this paper is to review experiences and to establish lessons of formal priority setting in four Swedish regional health authorities during the period 2003-2012.

This paper draws on a variety of sources, and evidence is organised according to three broad aspects: design and implementation of models and processes, application of evidence and decision analysis tools and decision making and implementation of decisions.

The processes accounted for here have resulted in useful experiences concerning technical arrangements as well as political and public strategies. All four sites used a particular model for priority setting that combined top-down- and bottom-up-driven elements. Although the process was authorised from the top it was clearly bottom-up driven and the template followed a professional rationale. New meeting grounds were introduced between politicians and clinical leaders. Overall a limited group of stakeholders were involved. By defusing political conflicts the likelihood that clinical leaders would regard this undertaking as important increased.

One tendency today is to unburden regional authorities of the hard decisions by introducing arrangements at national level. This study suggests that regional health authorities, in spite of being politically governed organisations, have the potential to execute a formal priority-setting process. Still, to make priority-setting processes more robust to internal as well as external threat remains a challenge.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the findings of this special issue and discusses the future challenges for policy, research and society. The findings suggest that challenges emerge as a result of legitimacy deficits of both consensus and contestatory modes of public involvement in health priority setting.

The paper draws on the discussions and findings presented in this special issue. It seeks to bring the country experiences and case studies together to draw conclusions for policy, research and society.

At least two recurring themes emerge. An underlying theme is the importance, but also the challenge, of establishing legitimacy in health priority setting. The country experiences suggest that we understand very little about the conditions under which representative, or authentic, participation generates legitimacy and under which it will be regarded as insufficient. A second observation is that public participation takes a variety of forms that depend on the opportunity structures in a given national context. Given this variety the conceptualization of public participation needs to be expanded to account for the many forms of public participation.

The paper concludes that the challenges of public involvement are closely linked to the question of how legitimate processes and decisions can be generated in priority setting. This suggests that future research must focus more narrowly on conditions under which legitimacy are generated in order to expand the understanding of public involvement in health prioritization.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate a novel approach to citizen engagement in health priority setting carried out in the context of Primary Care Trust (PCT) commissioning in the English National Health Service.

Four deliberative events were held with 139 citizens taking part in total. Events design incorporated elements of the Twenty-first Century Town Meeting and the World Café, and involved specially-designed dice games. Evaluation surveys reporting quantitative and qualitative participant responses were combined with follow-up interviews with both PCT staff and members of the public. An evaluation framework based on previous literature was employed.

The evaluation demonstrates high levels of enjoyment, learning and deliberative engagement. However, concerns were expressed over the leading nature of the voting questions and, in a small minority of responses, the simplified scenarios used in dice games. The engagement exercises also appeared to have minimal impact on subsequent Primary Care Trust resource allocation, confirming a wider concern about the influence of public participation on policy decision making. The public engagement activities had considerable educative and political benefits and overall the evaluation indicates that the specific deliberative tools developed for the exercise facilitated a high level of discussion.

This paper helps to fill the gap in empirical evaluations of deliberative approaches to citizen involvement in health care priority setting. It reports on a novel approach and considers a range of implications for future research and practice. The study raises important questions over the role of public engagement in driving priority setting decision making.

The purpose of this study is to provide a decision support tool to deal with the problem of seting priorites among patients competing for limited health care resources. Limited resources and unlimited demands prevent health-care services to be provided to all those in need. This became publicity evident with the current Covid-19 pandemic. Although controversial, health care rationing has always existed and is now inevitable. Setting priorities becomes then inevitable. How to define those priorities is a complex and yet irresolvable issue mainly because it involves several and conflicting criteria, translated into efficiency and equity considerations. This is why multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was introduced to health care as an appropriate decision-support framework for solving complex problems.

This paper proposes the application of two combined approaches – analytic hierarchy process (AHP)-Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and AHP-VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR), as decision support tools to rank patients with competing needs in a more effective and equitable way. A rationing scenario involving four patients, differentiated by personal characteristics and health conditions, is used to illustrate, test and compare the applicability of both approaches. After extraction of the relative weights of the prioritization criteria involved in the hypothetical scenario from paired wise comparison methods, TOPSIS and VIKOR priority setting methods were designed.

Results suggest that patients ranking from both combination approaches are similar and in accordance with the order made directly by health-care professionals. Therefore, the relative weights computed by AHP in combination with TOPSIS and/or VIKOR methods could be used with suitable applicability by health-care decision-makers.

This study is the first attempt to apply a combination of MCDA methods to patients’ prioritization context and the first to cross previous studies to deepen and consolidate the research.

Compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals published by MCB University Press: Facilities Volumes 8‐18; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐18; Property Management Volumes 8‐18; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐18.