The Existence and Nature of Physician Agency: Evidence of Stinting from the British National Health Service

Martin Chalkley and Colin Tilley

Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 2005, vol. 14, issue 3, 647-664

Abstract: The ability of physicians to make take‐it‐or‐leave‐it offers of treatment implies that even fully informed consumers of health care may receive treatments that they would not themselves choose. This paper examines both the extent and direction of this distortion away from patient choice—the physician agency effect—using a large patient‐level claims‐based data set for dental treatments under the British National Health Service. We find that an improvement in the outside opportunities of patients results in a small but significant increase in the level of service provided when dentists are remunerated on a fee‐for‐service basis. This is suggestive of stinting, wherein physician agency results in undertreatment relative to what patients would choose. We further find that the effect is increased when patients are fully insulated from the cost of their treatment.

Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1530-9134.2005.00077.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jemstr:v:14:y:2005:i:3:p:647-664

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... ref=1058-6407&site=1

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Economics & Management Strategy from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().