Background: Panels defining what should be considered a disease traditionally include only doctors. However, it has recently been argued that including the general public in such decisions could be beneficial, particularly as a disease label commonly results in requests for public funding for its treatment. To our knowledge, no study thus far has compared doctors’ and views on definition of disease and the use of public funding for their laypeople’s treatment. To compare the perceptions of doctors and lay public on the definition of diseases and Aims: the willingness to use public-tax revenue for their treatment. Methods: 3000 laypeople and 1500 doctors in Finland were asked to rate their agreement with two sets of 60 statements: state of being] is a and state of being] “[This disease” ”[This should be treated using public tax using a 5-point Likert scale. Pearson correlation revenue” coefficients and kappa statistics were used to and responses. compare doctors’ laypeople’s Results: 51% of doctors (n=741) and 50% of laypeople (n=1 537) responded. Overall, and views on what is disease and what should be treated using tax doctors’ laypeople’ revenue were similar (correlation for both comparisons: 0.93, 95% confidence interval: 0.88, 0.96) though there was large variability in both groups. Agreement was nearly perfect between and views on what is disease (kappa: 0.90) and on what should doctors’ laypeople’s be treated using tax revenue (kappa: 0.82). Considering a difference of > 1.0 point in average values as a threshold, the states that substantial differences in opinion existed between the two groups were dental caries, hip fracture and alcoholic cirrhosis on the former claim and anorexia and alcoholic cirrhosis on the latter (all: doctors > laypeople). Conclusions: Generally, doctors and laypeople agree on disease definition and public funding (Figure). However, there was both intra- and inter-group disagreement, suggesting that representative panels will have to deal with very divergent opinions. Title City Helsinki Teppo Järvinen Finland Full Name Country Affiliation Orthopaedics and Traumatology, Helsinki Phone +358-400-246-426 University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland Institutional Topeliuksenkatu 5 Fax Address P.O. Box 266 Postal code 00029 HUS E-mail teppo.jarvinen@uta.fi
Background: Panels defining what should be considered a disease traditionally include only doctors. However, it has recently been argued that including the general public in such decisions could be beneficial, particularly as a disease label commonly results in requests for public funding for its treatment. To our knowledge, no study thus far has compared doctors’ and laypeople’s views on definition of disease and the use of public funding for their treatment. Aims: To compare the perceptions of doctors and lay public on the definition of diseases and the willingness to use public-tax revenue for their treatment. Methods: 3000 laypeople and 1500 doctors in Finland were asked to rate their agreement with two sets of 60 statements: “[This state of being] is a disease” and ”[This state of being] should be treated using public tax revenue” using a 5-point Likert scale. Pearson correlation coefficients and kappa statistics were used to compare doctors’ and laypeople’s responses. Results: 51% of doctors (n=741) and 50% of laypeople (n=1 537) responded. Overall, doctors’ and laypeople’ views on what is disease and what should be treated using tax revenue were similar (correlation for both comparisons: 0.93, 95% confidence interval: 0.88, 0.96) though there was large variability in both groups. Agreement was nearly perfect between doctors’ and laypeople’s views on what is disease (kappa: 0.90) and on what should be treated using tax revenue (kappa: 0.82). Considering a difference of > 1.0 point in average values as a threshold, the states that substantial differences in opinion existed between the two groups were dental caries, hip fracture and alcoholic cirrhosis on the former claim and anorexia and alcoholic cirrhosis on the latter (all: doctors > laypeople). Conclusions: Generally, doctors and laypeople agree on disease definition and public funding (Figure). However, there was both intra- and inter-group disagreement, suggesting that representative panels will have to deal with very divergent opinions. Title City Helsinki Full Name Teppo Järvinen Country Finland Affiliation Orthopaedics and Traumatology, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland Phone +358-400-246-426 Institutional Address Topeliuksenkatu 5 P.O. Box 266 Fax Postal code 00029 HUS E-mail teppo.jarvinen@uta.fi
POD-Abstracts.docx