The Oregon formula.

Made just prior to the introduction of Britain's NHS reforms, the Oregon Formula was a bold (crude?) response to a situation in which demands for medical treatment far exceeded available resources. Devised by a committee of doctors and lay people in 1988, it balanced cost of treatment against age and quality of life with and without treatment and is used to determine which items of state healthcare should be dropped. Preliminary work on the Formula involved canvassing residents throughout the state to arrive at a system of comparative values (e.g. one heart repair operation against 10 hip replacements). Opinions of this way of rationalising health care were gathered from doctors and patients in Newcastle-upon- Tyne, which has one of Britain's most over-stretched health budgets, where it was not rejected out of hand. In view of reports of unstated "rationing" policies by British health authorities, "The Oregon Formula" has a more-than- prophetic relevance to the British healthcare situation.