Withdrawn study - Some methodological approaches remain limited in their ability to capture the diversity and complexity of healthcare organisation in Belgium. Context effects are not sufficiently taken into account, sometimes leading to results that are perceived as too “generic”. In this context, the realist approach to healthcare has emerged as a possible avenue for improving HSR research.
This is why this study has been included in the 2018 study programme, with the main objective of drawing up a process note on realist approaches.
However, in the meantime, no expert and no KCE study has explicitly used a methodology inspired by realist approaches. This may be due to their time-consuming nature, to a lack of in-house expertise or to the use of other tried-and-tested methods to capture contextualisation (description and analysis of the Belgian context, case studies with a precise selection of contextual variables likely to influence/explain the results, etc.).
As a result, it appears unnecessary to prepare a process note specifically dedicated to this methodological approach, since mastery of this methodology does not appear to meet a need identified by the KCE experts. Should subcontractors propose projects using these methods, there are sufficient other quality resources to assess the relevance of realist approaches.
