Table 1. Characteristics of Selected Papers .

Paper	Type of Paper	Country	Setting	Priority Setting Activity	Study Objective a
Baerøe17 2009	Conceptual	-	-	Resource allocation among patient groups	To develop a clinical decision-making framework
Bell et al18 2004	Empirical	Canada	A Canadian tertiary hospital	Resource allocation across hospital service areas and departments	To describe and evaluate the priority setting process in a Canadian hospital in response to the SARS outbreak
Bruni et al19 2007	Empirical	Canada	The Wait Times Strategy of Ontario, Canada	Resource allocation among patient groups	To describe and evaluate the priority setting process in a Canadian hospital
Danjoux et al20 2007	Empirical	Canada	A Canadian urban university academic health sciences centre	Adoption of new technology (endovascular aneurysm repair)	To describe and evaluate the priority setting process for the adoption of a new technology for repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms in a Canadian academic health sciences center
Dolan et al21 2007	Conceptual	-	-	Resource allocation at all levels of the healthcare system	To explore the relevance of procedural characteristics that are important in legal studies and social psychology to social choice contexts and provide evidence on their relative importance. To explore why certain procedural conditions are considered important
Friedman22 2008	Conceptual	-	-	No specific priority setting activity	To critically examine the accountability for reasonableness framework
Gallego23 2007	Empirical	Australia	An Australian teaching and tertiary care hospital	Medicine selection	To describe and evaluate the medicine selection process for high cost drugs in an Australian hospital
Gibson et al24 2004	Empirical	Canada	A Canadian academic health science center	Resource allocation across hospital service areas and departments	To assist decision-makers in a Canadian academic health center to develop fair priority setting processes
Gibson et al25 2005	Empirical	Canada	An Canadian urban academic health center	Resource allocation across hospital service areas and departments	To examine the influence of power dynamics among actors to the priority setting processes in a Canadian hospital
Gibson et al26 2006	Empirical	Canada	A health region in Canada	Allocation of healthcare resources within the district/region	To evaluate the use of PBMA at a health region in Canada
Gordon et al27 2009	Empirical	Argentina	An Argentinean acute care tertiary hospital	Resource allocation across hospital service areas and departments	To describe and evaluate the priority setting process in an Argentinean hospital with particular attention to the appeal process
Greenberg et al28 2005	Empirical	Israel	The National health insurer in Israel	Medicine selection	To evaluate the adoption of new technologies at the hospital level in Israel
Kapiriri and Martin29 2006	Empirical	Uganda	A 1500 bed tertiary hospital in Uganda	Resource allocation across hospital service areas and departments	To describe the priority setting practice in a tertiary care hospital in Uganda and evaluate the process
Kapiriri and Martin30 2007	Empirical	Uganda	Three hospitals, one in Norway, one Uganda, and one in Canada	Resource allocation across hospital service areas and departments	To describe and evaluate priority setting practices at the macro, meso and micro levels of the health systems in Uganda, Norway, and Canada
Kapiriri and Martin6 2010	Empirical	LMICs	LMICs	Resource allocation at all levels of the healthcare system	To develop a framework for successful priority setting in LMICs
Madden et al31 2005	Empirical	Canada	Three Canadian teaching hospitals	Resource allocation across hospital service areas and departments	To describe and evaluate the priority setting process in a Canadian hospital with particular attention to the appeal process
Maluka et al32 2011	Empirical	Tanzania	A district in Tanzania	Allocation of healthcare resources within the district/region	To evaluate healthcare resource allocation at the district level in Tanzania
Martin et al33 2002	Empirical	Canada	The advisory committee for the Ontario drug funding program of cancer care and the expert panel on Intracoronary Stents and Abciximab of the Ontario Cardiac Care Network	Assessment of health technology adoption in cardiac and cancer care	To evaluate the priority setting processes in a cardiac and cancer care center in Canada
Martin et al34 2003	Empirical	Canada	Three Canadian teaching hospitals	Medicines selection	To describe and evaluate priority setting for medicine selection in a Canadian hospital
Martin et al35 2003	Empirical	Canada	A Canadian tertiary-care teaching hospital	Resource allocation across hospital service areas and departments	To describe and evaluate the strategic planning process in a Canadian hospital
Mitton and Donaldson36 2003	Empirical	Canada	Three Canadian health regions	Resource allocation within the district/region	To examine lessons learned from the evaluation of the implementation of PBMA in a Canadian health region
Mitton et al37 2003	Empirical	Canada	A Canadian hospitals’ surgical department	Resource allocation across hospital service areas and departments	To evaluate the priority setting process in a surgical programme in a Canadian hospital
Mori et al38 2012	Empirical	Tanzania	Respondents from the Tanzanian health sector	Medicine selection	To evaluate the policy change to artemisinin combination therapy for the management of uncomplicated malaria
Peacock et al39 2006	Conceptual	-	-	Resource allocation across hospital service areas and departments	We describe checklists that can be used by decision-makers and clinicians for priority setting
Reeleder et al40 2005	Empirical	Canada	Forty-six Canadian hospitals	Resource allocation across hospital service areas and departments	To evaluate hospital managers assessment on the fairness of priority setting process in their hospitals
Sharma et al41 2006	Empirical	Canada	A Canadian community hospital	Adoption health technology (advanced laparoscopic surgery)	To describe and evaluate the priority setting process for the adoption of advanced laparoscopic surgery at a Canadian hospital
Shayo et al42 2012	Empirical	Tanzania	District health system	Resource allocation within the district/region	To examine challenges to fair priority setting in healthcare with a special focus on the role of ethnicity, gender, education, and wealth in Tanzania
Sibbald et al7 2009	Empirical	Canada	International, national, and local respondents in the Canadian health system	Resource allocation at all levels of the healthcare system	To develop a framework for successful priority setting in healthcare
Sibbald et al8 2010	Empirical	Canada	A Canadian urban community hospital	Resource allocation across hospital service areas and departments	To pilot a framework for successful priority setting in healthcare
Valdebenito43 et al 2009	Empirical	Chile	A referral and teaching hospital in Chile	Resource allocation across hospital service areas and departments	To describe and evaluate the priority setting process in a Chilean hospital
Wailoo and Anand44 2005	Empirical	United Kingdom	The public in a district in the United Kingdom	Resource allocation at all levels of the healthcare system	To explore the application of procedural preferences in healthcare priority setting processes

Abbreviations: SARS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome; PBMA, programme budgeting and marginal analysis; LMICs, low and middle income countries.

^a The study objective column of the table are based on quotes from the respective papers