Informed Public Participation in Decision-making
Assessment of citizens' views has become an integral part of the management of the health system, whether formally through the mechanism of citizen 'governors' on regional or district boards or less formally through public consultation exercises. For policy makers this comes to the fore around collective resource allocation decisions e.g. the scope of publicly-funded services (de-listing), hospital closures, service relocations, re-allocations to health services from
health care services. For managers, public consultation is often seen as central to their local restructuring efforts because of the potential validation that citizen input provides for difficult down-sizing or re-organizational decisions.