Incentives And Choice In Health Care

Leading scholars in the field of health economics evaluate the role of incentives in health and health-care decision making from the perspectives of both supply and demand. A vast body of empirical evidence has accumulated demonstrating that incentives affect health care choices made by both consumers and suppliers of health care services. Decisions in health care are affected by many types of incentives, such as the rate of return pharmaceutical manufacturers expect on their investments in research and development, or disincentives, such as increases in copayments patients must make when they visit physicians or are admitted to hospitals. In this volume, leading scholars in health economics review these new and important results and describe their own recent research assessing the role of incentives in health care markets and decisions people make that affect their personal health. The contexts include demand decisions—choices made by individuals about health care services they consume and the health insurance policies they purchase—and supply decisions made by medical students, practicing physicians, hospitals, and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Researchers and students of health economics and policy makers will find this book a valuable resource, both for learning economic concepts, particularly as they apply to health care, and for reading up-to-date summaries of the empirical evidence. General readers will find the book's chapters accessible, interesting, and useful for gaining an understanding of the likely effects of alternative health care policies. Contributors Henry J. Aaron, Ernst R. Berndt, John Cawley, Julie M. Donohue, Donna Gilleskie, Brian R. Golden, Gautam Gowrisankaran, Chee-Ruey Hsieh, Hirschel Kasper, Thomas G. McGuire, Joseph P. Newhouse, Sean Nicholson, Mark V. Pauly, Anna D. Sinaiko, Frank Sloan

This volume contains selected papers from the First European Conference on Health Economics, held in Barcelona on 19-21 September 1989. The meeting was organized by the Spanish Health Economics Association (AES) and chaired by L. Bohigas. The following groups participated: the English Health Economists' Study Group, the Associa

An introduction to the new health care for profit. Legal differences between investor-owned and nonprofit health care institutions. Wall Street and the for-profit hospital management companies. When investor-owned corporations buy hospitals: some issues and concerns. Physician involvement in hospital decision making. Economic incentives and clinical decisions. Ethical dilemmas of for-profit enterprise in health care. Secondary income from recommended treatment: should fiduciary principles constrain physician behavior?

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.

There is growing international evidence that the effectiveness of health services stems primarily from the extent to which the incentives facing providers and consumers are aligned with ""better health"" objectives. Efficiency in health service provision requires that providers and consumers have incentives to use healthcare resources in ways that generate the maximum health gains. Equity in at least one sense requires that consumers requiring the same care are treated equally, irrespective of their ability to pay. Efficiency in the use of health services requires that consumers are knowledgeable about the services on offer and which are most appropriate to their needs. The papers in this volume are selected from an international conference organised by the CDRI, Cambodia, that tried to deal with some of these issues. With participation of international and local experts, it aimed at collecting major experiences and innovative solutions from inside and outside the country to improve health sector performance, with particular focus on institutions, motivations and incentives.

Leading scholars in the field of health economics evaluate the role of incentives in health and health-care decision making from the perspectives of both supply and demand.

Health systems in most low-income countries are under-resourced and underused, failing to meet the needs of those who need health care the most. But what if health service providers-or even patients-were rewarded partially on the basis of their performance? Based on a review of experiences to date, the authors of this volume argue that performance incentives have great potential to improve health care for the world's poor. They are one way to use funding dedicated to individual diseases or interventions to strengthen core health system functions. In Part I, Eichler and Levine provide clear guidance about how to design, implement, and evaluate such programs, whether they target health care providers, patients, or both. Part II comprises a set of case studies that examine the use of such incentives to address a range of health conditions and challenges in diverse countries. Performance Incentives for Global Health: Potential and Pitfalls will help policymakers and program managers in developing countries and in the donor community improve health care systems through the strategic use of performance incentives. Book jacket.