The Department of Health Policy at Jefferson Medical College tackles many issues that fall within the arena of health policy. These issues include multiple topics ranging from the quality of patient care, the economics of pharmaceuticals, (pharmacoeconomics), and outcomes research. The last of these topics is one of the most difficult to pursue as it researches an intangible characteristic and then tries to place a financial value upon it. This characteristic is Quality of Life.

            In conjunction with pharmacoeconomics, quality of Life research can determine whether a drug that serves a minority of the population should or should not be developed based on financial return versus developmental costs. Although issues like these may be easy to rationalize based on a monetary value, there are ethical implications to consider.

            Dr. David Nash and his team at Jefferson have researched many areas of health policy by reaching out to the academic and professional communities. Researching areas that have ethical concerns at their center is not easy. In conjunction with this, it is hard to consider placing financial values on ideas like quality of life. Still, the research area of health policy has these topics at its core. Institutions like Jefferson Medical College’s Health Policy Department will continue to study them in order to help policy makers choose the paths that try to balance the ethical and financial standards that guide health care.