Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The concept of the Iron Triangle of Health Care was first introduced in William Kissick’s book, Medicine’s Dilemmas: Infinite
Needs Versus Finite Resources in 1994, describing three competing health care issues: access, quality, and cost containment.[1][2]
Each of the vertices represents identical priorities. Increasing or decreasing one results in changes to one or both of the other two. For
example, a policy that increases access to health services would lower quality of health care and/or increase cost. The desired state of
[3]
the triangle, high access and quality with low cost represents value in a health care system.
References
1. Kissick, W. (1994). “Medicine’s Dilemmas” (https://books.google.com/books?id=G038jRhEwRkC&printsec=frontcove
r&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false) . New Haven and New London, CT: Yale University
Press.
2. Niles, N. (2015). History of the U.S. Healthcare System(https://books.google.com/books?id=A0UoA
wAAQBAJ&print
sec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false). In Basics of the U.S. Health Care System (2nd ed., pp. 12-13). Burlington,
Mass: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
3. Carroll, A. (October 3, 2012).JAMA Forum (http://newsatjama.jama.com/2012/10/03/jama-forum-the-iron-triangle-of-
health-care-access-cost-and-quality/). Retrieved January 18, 2015.
4. Godfrey, T. (March 3, 2012). What is the Iron Triangle of Health Care (http://pennsquarepost.com/what-is-the-iron-tria
ngle-of-health-care/)? Retrieved January 18, 2015.
5. Davis, L. (October 26, 2012).The iron triangle of health care is not law
, but an observation (http://www.kevinmd.com/
blog/2012/10/iron-triangle-health-care-law-observation.html). Retrieved January 18, 2015.
6. Department of Justice. (n.d.).Executive Summary: Current Health Care Challenges(http://www.justice.gov/atr/publi
c/health_care/204694/exec_sum.htm). Retrieved January 18, 2015.
Text is available under theCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this
site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of theWikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.