The Impact of a Billing System on Healthcare Utilization: Evidence from the Thai Civil Servant Medical Benefit Scheme

Nada Wasi, Jirawat Panpiemras and Wanwiphang Manachotphong

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2021, vol. 83, issue 1, 228-251

Abstract: This study examines how a new billing process of the Thai Civil Servant Medical Benefit Scheme affects outpatient care utilization. Unlike policy changes considered in most existing studies, there is no change in cost‐sharing for the scheme considered here. Previously, the beneficiaries had to pay out of pocket and receive their reimbursement later. The new billing system allows hospitals to charge the government directly. Using patient‐level data from a large hospital, we find that the change affects outpatient utilization through both visiting rates and treatment intensity. These positive impacts are moderate, but persistent. The estimates are not sensitive to our choice of a time window, but their magnitudes can be sensitive to model specifications. Our analysis also suggests that patients with lower utilization rates (conditional on illnesses) prior to the change in the billing process increase their healthcare utilization more proportionally.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/obes.12376

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:obuest:v:83:y:2021:i:1:p:228-251

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0305-9049

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Christopher Adam, Anindya Banerjee, Christopher Bowdler, David Hendry, Adriaan Kalwij, John Knight and Jonathan Temple

More articles in Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics from Department of Economics, University of Oxford Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().